Lost in transition: The transfer of lean manufacturing to construction

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

Volumn 15, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 383-398

  Jørgensen, Bo ^a   Emmitt, Stephen ^b  

^a ConProC ^*  (Denmark)

^b LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Construction industry; Lean production; Manufacturing systems; Transfer processes

Indexed keywords

CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY; PAPER COATING; PLANNING;

CONSTRUCTION SECTORS; DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH; GAINING MOMENTUM; IN TRANSITIONS; LEAN CONSTRUCTION; LEAN MANUFACTURING; LEAN PRODUCTION; LITERATURE REVIEWS; MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES; PRODUCTION SYSTEMS; TRANSITION (JEL CLASSIFICATIONS:E52 ,E41 ,E31);

REVIEWS;

EID: 47249164314     PISSN: 09699988     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1108/09699980810886874     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. Abrahamson, E. (1996), "Management fashion", Academy of Management Review, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 254-85.
2. Alarcón, L. (Ed.) (1997), Lean Construction, A.A. Balkema Publishers, Rotterdam.
3. Alarcón, L., Diethelm, S., Rojo, O. and Calderon, R. (2005), "Assessing the impacts of implementing lean construction", Proceedings of the 13th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC-13), Sydney, July, pp. 387-393.
4. Alves, T.C.L. and Tommelein, I.D. (2004), "Simulation of buffering and batching practices in the interface detailing-fabrication - installation of hvac ductwork", Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of The International Group for Lean Construction, Elsinore, Denmark.
5. Arbulu, R.J., Tommelein, I.D., Walsh, K.D. and Hershauer, J.C. (2003), "Value stream analysis of a re-engineered construction supply chain", Building Research & Information, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 161-71.
6. Ballard, G. (1993), "Lean construction and EPC performance improvement", 1st International Workshop on Lean Construction, Espoo, Finland (reprinted in Alarcón, L., 1997, pp. 79-91).
7. Ballard, G. (2000), "The last planner system of production control", PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, Birmingham.
8. Ballard, G. (2002), "Managing work flow on design projects: a case study", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 284-91.
9. Ballard, G. (2005), "Construction: one type of project-based production system", Proceedings SCRI Forum Event Lean Construction: The Next Generation, January 19th, SCRI, University of Salford.
10. Ballard, G. and Howell, G. (1998), "Shielding production: essential step in production control", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, Vol. 124 No. 1, pp. 11-17.
11. Ballard, G. and Howell, G.A. (2003a), "Lean project management", Building Research and Information, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 119-33.
12. Ballard, G. and Howell, G.A. (2003b), "An update on last planner", in Proceeding For the 11th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC-11), Blacksburg, VA, USA, July 2003.
13. Ballard, G., Harper, N. and Zabelle, T. (2003), "Learning to see work flow: application of lean production concepts to precast concrete fabrication", Journal of Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 6-14.
14. Ballard, G., Koskela, L., Howell, G.A. and Tommelein, I.D. (2005), "Discussion of 'improving labor flow reliability for better productivity as lean construction principle' by H. Randolph Thomas, Michael J. Horman, R. Edward Minchin Jr and Dong Chen", Discussion and Closures in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, May, pp. 615-16.
15. Ballard, G., Tommelein, I., Koskela, L. and Howell, G. (2002), "Lean construction tools and techniques", in Hellingsworth, B., Best, R. and de Valence, G. (Eds), Design and Construction: Building in Value, Elsevier, pp. 227-55.
16. Benders, J. (1999), "Tricks and trucks: a case study of organization concepts at work", The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 624-37.
17. Benders, J. and van Bijsterveld, M. (2000), "Leaning on lean: the reception of a management fashion in Germany", New Technology, Work and Employment, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 50-64.
18. Berggren, C. (1992), Alternatives to Lean Production: Work Organization in the Swedish Auto Industry, ILR Press, Ithaca, New York, NY.
19. Berggren, C. (1993), "Lean production - the end of history?", Work, Employment and Society, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp. 163-88.
20. Boyer, R. and Freyssenet, M. (2002), The Productive Models: The Conditions of Profitability, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY.
21. Briggs, P. (1988), "The Japanese at work: illusions of the ideal", Industrial Relations Journal, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 24-30.
22. CIB (2002), Benchmarking of Labor-Intensive Construction Activities: Lean Construction and Fundamental Principles of Workforce Management, CIB Publication 276 (by Thomas, R., Horman, M., de Souza, U.E.L. and Zavrski, I.), International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB), Rotterdam.
23. CII (2004), Application of Lean Manufacturing Principles to Construction. A Report to the Construction Industry Institute (CII no. 191), Diekmann, J., Krewedl, M., Balonick, J., Stewart, T. and Won, S. The University of Texas at Austin, TX.
24. Choo, H.J., Hammond, J., Tommelein, I.D., Austin, S.A. and Ballard, G. (2004), "DePlan: a tool for integrated design management", Automation in Construction, Vol. 13, pp. 313-26.
25. Cooney, R. (2002), "Is 'lean' a universal production system?: Batch production in the automotive industry", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 22 No. 10, pp. 1130-47.
26. Cooper, R. and Slagmulder, R. (1999), Supply Chain Development for the Lean Enterprise, The Institute of Management Accountants Foundation for Applied Research, Montvale, NJ, Productivity Press, Portland, OR.
27. Cusumano, M.A. (1994), "The limits of 'Lean'", Sloan Management Review, Summer, pp. 27-32.
28. DETR (1998), Rethinking Construction, Department of the Environment, Transportation and the Regions, London.
29. Dohse, K., Jürgens, U. and Malsch, T. (1985), "From 'Fordism' to 'Toyotism'?", The Social Organization of the Labor Process in the Japanese Automobile Industry, Politics and Society, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 115-46.
30. Elfving, J.A., Tommelein, I.D. and Ballard, G. (2005), "Consequences of competitive bidding in project-based production", Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 173-81.
31. Fernie, S. and Thorpe, A. (2007), "Exploring change in construction: supply chain management", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 319-33.
32. Freire, J. and Alarcón, L.F. (2002), "Achieving lean design process: improvement methodology", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, Vol. 128 No. 3, pp. 248-56.
33. Formoso, C.T., dos Santos, A. and Powell, J.A. (2002a), "An exploratory study on the applicability of process transparency in construction sites", Journal of Construction Research, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 35-54.
34. Formoso, C.T., Soibelman, L., De Cesare, C. and Isatto, E.L. (2002b), "Material waste in building industry: main causes and prevention", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, July/August, pp. 316-25.
35. Gil, N., Tommelein, I.D., Stout, A. and Garrett, T. (2005), "Embodying product and process flexibility to cope with challenging project deliveries", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, ASCE, April, pp. 439-48.
36. Green, S.D. (1999a), "The missing arguments of lean construction", Construction Management and Economics, Vol. 17, pp. 133-7.
37. Green, S.D. (1999b), "The dark side of lean construction: exploitation and ideology", Proceedings for the 7th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC-7), Berkeley, CA.
38. Green, S.D. (2000), "The future of lean construction - a brave new world", Proceedings for the 8th Annual Conference on Lean Construction (IGLC-8), Brighton.
39. Green, S.D. (2002), "The human resource management implications of lean construction: critical perspectives and conceptual chasms", Journal of Construction Research, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 147-66.
40. Green, S.D. and May, S.C. (2005), "Lean construction: arenas of enactment, models of diffusion and the meaning of 'leanness'", Building Research & Information, Vol. 33 No. 6, pp. 498-511.
41. Hines, P., Holweg, M. and Rich, N. (2004), "Learning to evolve; a review of contemporary lean thinking", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 24 No. 10, pp. 994-1011.
42. Howell, G. and Ballard, G. (1999), "Bringing light to the dark side of lean construction: a response to Stuart Green", Proceedings for the 7th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC-7), Berkeley, CA.
43. Howell, G.A., Ballard, G., Tommelein, I.D. and Koskela, L. (2004), "Discussion of 'reducing varibility to improve performance as a lean construction principle', by H. Randolph Thomas, Michael J. Horman, Ubiraci Espinelli Lemes de Souza, and Ivica Zavrski", Discussion and Closures in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, March/April, pp. 299-300.
44. Johansen, E., Porter, G. and Greenwood, D. (2004), "Implementing lean: UK culture and system change, Proceedings for the 12th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC-12), Elsinore, August.
45. Jørgensen, B. (2006), "Integrating lean design and lean construction: processes and methods", PhD thesis, Department of Civil Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Lynyby, p. 286.
46. Jørgensen, B. and Emmitt, S. (2008), "Investigating the implementation of design and construction from a 'lean' perspective", Construction Innovation: Information, Process, Management, Vol. 8 No. 2.
47. Jürgens, U. (1995), "Lean production in Japan: myth and reality", in Littek, W. and Charles, T. (Eds), The New Division of Labour: Emerging Forms of Work Organisation in International Perspective, Walter de Gruyter, New York, NY, pp. 349-66.
48. Katayama, H. and Bennett, D. (1996), "Lean production in a changing competitive world: a Japanese perspective", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 8-23.
49. Kenley, R. (2004), "Project micromanagement: practical site planning and management of work flow", Proceedings for the 12th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC-12), Elsinore, August.
50. Kieser, A. (1997), "Rhetoric and myth in management fashion", Organization, Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 49-74.
51. Koskela, L. (1992), Application of the New Production Philosophy to Construction, CIFE, Stanford University, CA, Tech. Report No. 72.
52. Koskela, L. (1993), "Lean production in construction", 1st International Workshop on Lean Construction, Espoo, Finland (reprinted in Alarcón, L., 1997, pp. 1-9).
53. Koskela, L. (2000), An Exploration Towards a Production Theory and its Application to Construction, VTT, Espoo.
54. Koskela, L. (2001), "On new footnotes to shingo", Proceedings for the 9th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC-9), Singapore.
55. Koskela, L. and Ballard, G. (2006), "Should project management be based on theories of economics or production?", Building Research and Information, Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 154-63.
56. Koskela, L., Ballard, G. and Howell, G. (2004), "Project management reconceived from a production perspective", Proceedings, CIB World Congress, Toronto.
57. Koskela, L., Ballard, G. and Tanhuanpää, V.P. (1997), "Towards lean design management", Proceedings for the 5th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC-5), Gold Coast, Australia.
58. Koskela, L., Howell, G., Ballard, G. and Tommelein, I. (2002), "The foundations of lean construction", in Hellingsworth, B., Best, R. and de Valence, G. (Eds), Design and Construction: Building in Value, Elsevier, pp. 211-26.
59. Koskela, L. and Kagioglou, M. (2005), "On the metaphysics of production", Proceedings of the 13th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, Sydney, July.
60. Lapinski, A.R., Horman, M.J. and Riley, D.R. (2006), "Lean processes for sustainable project delivery", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, ASCE, October, pp. 1083-91.
61. Lewis, M.A. (2000), "Lean production and sustainable competitive advantage", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 20 No. 8, pp. 959-78.
62. Lillrank, P. (1995), "The transfer of management innovations from Japan", Organization Studies, Vol. 16 No. 6, pp. 971-89.
63. Miller, C.J.M., Packham, G.A. and Thomas, B.C. (2002), "Harmonization between main contractors and subcontractors: a prerequisite for lean construction?", Journal of Construction Research, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 67-82.
64. Morris, J. and Wilkinson, B. (1995), "The transfer of japanese management to alien institutional environments", Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 719-30.
65. Ohno, T. (1988), The Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production, Productivity Press, Portland, OR.
66. Paez, O., Salem, S., Solomon, J. and Genaidy, A. (2005), "Moving from lean manufacturing to lean construction: towards a common sociotechnological framework", Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 233-45.
67. dos Santos, A. (1999), "Application of flow principles in the production management of construction sites", PhD thesis, School of Construction and Property Management, University of Salford, Salford.
68. Shingo, S. (1988), Non-Stock Production: The Shingo System for Continuous Improvement, Productivity Press Inc., Cambridge, MA.
69. Shingo, S. (1989), A Study of the Toyota Production System From an Industrial Engineering Viewpoint (rev. ed.), Productivity Press Inc., Cambridge, MA (1st ed. 1981).
70. Sullivan, J.J. (1992), "Japanese management philosophies: from the vacuous to the brilliant", California Management Review, Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 66-87.
71. Tanskanen, K., Wegelius, T. and Nyman, H. (1993), "New tools for lean construction", 1st International Workshop on Lean Construction. Espoo, Finlan (reprinted in Alarcón, L., 1997, pp. 335-41).
72. Thomas, H.R., Horman, M.J., de Souza, U.E.L. and Zavrski, I. (2002), "Reducing variability to improve performance as a lean construction principle", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, ASCE, March/April, pp. 144-54.
73. Thomas, H.R., Horman, M.J., Minchin, R.E. Jr and Chen, D. (2003), "Improving labor flow reliability for better productivity as lean construction principle", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, ASCE, May/June, pp. 251-61.
74. Thomas, H.R., Horman, M.J., de Souza, U.E.L. and Zavrski, I. (2004), Closure to "Reducing varibility to improve performance as a lean construction principle", by H. Thomas, H.R., Horman, M.J., de Souza, U.E.L. and Zavrski, I., Discussion and Closures in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, ASCE, March/April, pp. 300-301.
75. Thomas, H.R., Horman, M.J., Minchin, R.E. Jr and Chen, D. (2005), "Closure to 'Reducing varibility to improve performance as a lean construction principle' by H. Randolph Thomas, Michael J. Horman, Ubiraci Espinelli Lemes de Souza, and Ivica Zavrski", Discussion and Closures in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, May, pp. 616-7.
76. Tommelein, I.D. (1999), "Lean construction experiments using discrete-event simulation: techniques and tools for process re-engineering? ", International Journal of Computer-Integrated Design and Construction, CIDAC, Special issue on Construction Process Re-engineering, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 53-63.
77. Tommelein, I.D., Riley, D.R. and Howell, G.A. (1999), "Parade game: impact of flow variability on trade performance", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, Vol. 125 No. 5, pp. 304-10.
78. Tsao, C. (2005), "Use of work structuring to increase performance of project-based production systems", PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
79. Tsao, C., Tommelein, I., Swanlund, E. and Howell, A. (2004), "Work structuring to achieve integrated product-process design", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, Vol. 130 No. 6, pp. 780-9.
80. Tzortzopoulos, P. (2004), "The design and implementation of product development process models in construction companies", PhD thesis, University of Salford, Salford.
81. Vrijhoef, R. and Koskela, L. (1999), "Roles of supply chain management in construction", in Proceedings for the 7th Annual Conference of The International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC-7), Berkeley, CA.
82. Vrijhoef, R. and Koskela, L. (2000), "The four roles of supply chain management in construction", European Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management, Vol. 6 Nos 3-4, pp. 169-78.
83. Vrijhoef, R. and Koskela, L. (2005), "A critical review of construction as a project-based industry: identifying paths towards a project-independent approach to construction", Proceedings of the CIB Joint Symposium, "Combining Forces - Advancing Facilities Management and Construction through Innovation", VTT, Helsinki.
84. Vrijhoef, R., Koskela, L. and Voordijk, H. (2003), "Understanding construction supply chains: a multiple theoretical approach to inter-organizational relationships in construction", Proceedings for the 11th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC-11), Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.
85. Wilkinson, B., Morris, J. and Munday, M. (1995), "The iron fist in the velvet glove: management and organization in Japanese manufacturing transplants in Wales", Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 819-30.
86. Wilkinson, B. and Oliver, N. (1989), "Power, control and the kanban", Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 47-58.
87. Williams, K., Haslam, C., Johal, S., Williams, J., Adcroft, A. and Willis, R. (1995), "Management practice or structural factors: the case of America versus Japan in the car industry", Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 9-37.
88. Winch, G.M. (2005), "Construction as production by projects", in Kazi, S. (Ed.), Learning from Experience: New Challenges, Theories and Practices in Construction, in Proceedings of the CIB Joint Symposium, "Combining Forces - Advancing Facilities Management and Construction through Innovation", Vol. 7, VTT, Helsinki, pp. 25-41.
89. Winch, G.M. (2006), "Towards a theory of construction as production by projects", Building Research and Information, Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 164-74.
90. Womack, J.P. and Jones, D.T. (1996), Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.
91. Womack, J.P., Jones, D.T. and Roos, D. (1990), The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production, Harper Business, New York, NY.