How beneficial in Lean Construction

The construction agency is badly broken and needs fixing, How can an industry work on rising up and meeting the challenges of customer demand for a better quality, improved profitability and the shortage of workers that are actually skilled and know how to do their jobs right?  The first step that should be considered is to cast aside the not invented here syndrome and embrace a time tested manufacturing solution, the Toyota production system commonly called lean. Why should construction company managers even consider lean as a way to improve their business, here are some facts that will open your eyes about the construction industry in the United States.

-         Most of the time is spent waiting or fixing mistakes critical shortages exist is those workers that are skilled or qualified.

-         The return on equity for construction pales in comparison to all other industries in the US  An average working for construction shows only 40% efficiency customers are mostly frustrated with poor quality, confrontation, excessive change orders, and scheduling delay.

these are some of the same or similar issues, Japanese companies like Toyota faced in the 1950’s. Lean construction can help remediate the dire conditions described above. While lean is no gold or silver bullet, lean construction offers substantial improvements to the problems facing the construction industry? If construction companies want to prosper in the 21^st century then they should go on towards lean thinking.

Now the question that comes is, Why is there so much waste? Construction projects are so fragmented. Many times subcontractors do their work disregarding how what they do impact the work of other subcontractors. We call this the "throw it over the wall' mentality. One functional department ( in this case subcontractor) completes its part of the project and throws it over the wall to the next department (subcontractor) who throws it back over the wall because it isn't right. This mentality sub-optimizes the performance of the entire project creating quality and schedule problems. Lean construction is a very systematic application of lean thinking to the design and construction of buildings that do what clients and end users want value. Lean thinking was evolved over the last 50 years and as revolutionized a few parts of manufacturing and is now facilitating significant improvements in the way service organizations like hospitals banks etc. are meeting customer requirements.

Adopting lean thinking requires sustained work over a number of years. There are no instant solutions. For most people, lean requires a change in the way they think and the behaviors that support their actions. There are many things that lean organizations do that can be copied   partnering, supply chain management, value stream analysis, flow and things related to these, but they are only lean when they are done with lean intent. That requires lean thinking around how the organization works.