Japan Federation of Construction Management Engineers Associations

What is Lean Construction?

(with one of the Japanese trials for higher productivity / Information Sharing System)

Executive Director, JCM, Japan

(Japan Federation of Construction Management Engineers Associations)

Akira Inokuma, Dr.

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1. What is Lean Construction?

1.1 Brief History of Lean Construction and background of this paper

Toyota Production System (established in Japan)

1980 s

Manufacturing industry (U.S. & Others)

1990s

Construction industry (Japan)

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Today

Construction industry (U.S. & Others)

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1.2 Toyota Production System

(TPS, ref Taiichi Oono, Toyota seisan housiki, 1978)

Two key pillars of Toyota Production System

Just-in-time Productivity

Jidoka (Self-control system) Quality

Examples of TPS Best Practices

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Just-in-time Productivity

Just-in-time means that each manufacturing process provides as many products as the next process requires (Pull system).
Kanban ( an order to produce or to transport) is used for Just-in-time with its rules like that kanban prohibits producing goods without a kanban.

Production leveling in responding to the diverse demands

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Jidoka (Self-control system) Quality Jidoka or Self-control system means stopping lines automatically in such cases as some defect occurred.

Workers should do other works than their original work as long as no line-stopping sign (Andon) is shown (multi process operation).
Each engineer should assure quality when he handles products in the process.
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Examples of TPS Best Practices

Repeat why, 5 times Within the usual cycle individual play is required, but in such cases as individual delay or between the cycles mutual assisting and team play is required. Kanban has only necessary information of production or transportation. Do not make isolated islands, because in that case we cannot help each other. Standardize the work protocol. It includes takt (cycle time), work sequence and inventory in a cycle.
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JCM 1.3 Lean Construction Two key concepts in lean construction Just-in-time Same as TPS
Work standardization Eliminates waste of delivery time Cooperation and improvement Last Planner System

Self-control system Same as TPS

Restart to manufacture products after problems are resolved.

Improvement of Owner side

Alliance

order system (Information sharing system)

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JCM 1.4 Definition of lean construction 1.4.1 Definitions at present

<Def. 1> Lean is a way to design production systems to minimize waste of materials, time, and effort in order to generate the maximum possible amount of value.
by L Koskela et.al ,The foundations of lean construction, 2002

<Def. 2> Lean construction is a philosophy based on the concepts of lean manufacturing. It is about managing and improving the construction process to profitably deliver what the customer needs.
by Constructing Excellence (association in U.K.) Lean Construction, 2004
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JCM 1.4.2 Conditions for the definition

<Condition 1> What corresponds to Just-in-time is to minimize waste (Def1) / profitably (Def2) / productivity (Def3) / efficiency
<Condition 2> What corresponds to Jidoka is value (Def1) / customer needs (Def2) / quality(Def3) / Self-control <Condition 3> Lean / lean manufacturing (Def2) / lean practice(Def3)
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Are they Enough?

<Condition 4> construction site ?

<Condition 5> So to speak Cultural things ?

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JCM 1.4.3 Proposed definition and further questions

<Def. 3> Lean construction is the construction method to pursue no-waste productivity (condition 1) and assure the necessary quality (condition 2) through the lean practices (condition 3 ) .

To clarify lean practices more, we could add some examples of practices such as minimizing the waste, production leveling or multi process operation.
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This leads us to another question:

For example,

1. If we take critical pass method into lean construction because it surely contributes to no waste, we have to take almost all the fields of construction management into lean construction, which means that lean construction is construction management.

Another field we should consider is IT. We cannot take all means of IT into lean.
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2. To solve 1 above, we could examine the connection between the field at issue and one relevant practice of the lean best practices. For this we should identify all the practices first. 3. TPS is born in a pure-private factory of mass production. So public sector is the field we should add in application of lean method to construction industry. And some part of TPS might be difficult to apply to public works.
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2. One of the Japanese trials for higher productivity / Information Sharing System
2.1 Information Sharing System
Contractor
Owner

Internet
1, 2 Documents

1. Submit the documents.

3. Schedule Management

3. Online Bulletin

2. Check the documents and make the approval. 4. Perform the electronic inspection.

4. Do the electronic document delivery.

<Figure> Concept of Information Sharing System

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2.2 Trial Run of the Information Sharing System and Evaluation

6,200

3,300 1,500 1,100

2009

2010

2011

2012

Year

<Figure> Number of Trial Runs of the Information Sharing System in MLIT

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Don't Feel the Necessity 5% Need to be Improved 19% Still Hard to Evaluate 34% Very Unsatisfied 6% Very Satisfied 6%

Very Good 42%

Not Satisfied 29% A Little Satisfied 59%

By Contractor (by the JCM - 2012)

B Owner (seminar by Jacic)

<Figure> Evaluation of the Information Sharing System

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Toyota Production System

(Ref: Toyota Motor Corporation official site:
http://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/toyota_production_system/

A production system which is steeped in the philosophy of the complete elimination of all waste imbuing all aspects of production in pursuit of the most efficient methods.
Toyota Motor Corporations vehicle production system is a way of making things that is sometimes referred to as a lean manufacturing system or a Just-in-Time (JIT) system, and has come to be well known and studied worldwide.

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JCM This production control system has been established based on many years of continuous improvements, with the objective of making the vehicles ordered by customers in the quickest and most efficient way, in order to deliver the vehicles as quickly as possible. The Toyota Production System (TPS) was established based on two concepts: The first is called jidoka (which can be loosely translated as automation with a human touch) which means that when a problem occurs, the equipment stops immediately, preventing defective products from being produced; The second is the concept of Just-in-Time, in which each process produces only what is needed by the next process in a continuous flow. Based on the basic philosophies of jidoka and Just-in-Time, the TPS can efficiently and quickly produce vehicles of sound quality, one at a time, that fully satisfy customer requirements.
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JCM TPS Concept

Jidoka

Just-in-Time

Highlighting / visualization of problems

- Quality must be built in during the manufacturing process! -

Productivity improvement

- Making only what is needed,

when it is needed, and in the amount needed!
Producing quality products efficiently through the complete elimination of waste, inconsistencies, and unreasonable requirements on the production line. In order to deliver a vehicle ordered by a customer as quickly as possible, the vehicle is efficiently built within the shortest possible period of time by adhering to the following:
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Jidoka

If equipment malfunction or a defective part is discovered, the affected machine automatically stops, and operators cease production and correct the problem. For the Just-in-Time system to function, all of the parts that are made and supplied must meet predetermined quality standards. This is achieved through jidoka.

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Jidoka
1. Jidoka means that a machine safely stops when the normal processing is completed. It also means that, should a quality / equipment problem arise, the machine detects the problem on its own and stops, preventing defective products from being produced. As a result, only products satisfying quality standards will be passed on to the following processes on the production line. Since a machine automatically stops when processing is completed or when a problem arises and is communicated via the andon (problem display board), operators can confidently continue performing work at another machine, as well as easily identify the problem's cause to prevent its recurrence. This means that each operator can be in charge of many machines, resulting in higher productivity, while continuous improvements lead to greater processing capacity.
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2.

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Just-in-Time 1. When a vehicle order is received, a production instruction must be issued to the beginning of the vehicle production line as soon as possible.
2. The assembly line must be stocked with required number of all needed parts so that any type of ordered vehicle can be assembled. The assembly line must replace the parts used by retrieving the same number of parts from the partsproducing process (the preceding process). The preceding process must be stocked with small numbers of all types of parts and produce only the numbers of parts that were retrieved by an operator from the next process.
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3.

4.

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