Abstract
Lean construction is known to reduce costs, improve profit or increase competitiveness, increase business opportunity and customer base, improve health and safety, improve quality, yield higher employee salaries, shorten production timescales and increase customer satisfaction. With little attention on research of lean construction in Malaysia, it remains a problem of non-standardization in waste elimination strategies thereby sub optimizing waste management in Malaysian construction projects. The objective of this paper is to evaluate lean construction techniques and measure the feasibility in term of their applicability for construction at selected sites in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The study is novel and significant in a sense that it can help to develop reliable management strategies for implementing lean construction technologies at the construction sites. Case studies were carried out as a strategic method and comprehensive survey that covers both questionnaire and interview were adopted as a method of data collection. Likert scale 1 to 5 was used in the written questionnaire with workers in order to assess the level of awareness and acceptance on the need of lean construction techniques for eight construction sites in various places and with various categories (infrastructure and building construction projects) in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Later, semi structural interview was conducted with expert judgment to justify the factors which affect the implementation of lean construction at the construction sites. From the study outcome, it was discovered that both Total Quality Management (TQM) and Industrialized Building System (IBS) were rated by the respondents to be highly effective in both infrastructure and building construction projects.
Highlights
Egan [1] stated that lean thinking is dominated by an ‘obsession’ to eradicate waste from all business processes
Based on an interview with a CIDB manager, it was found that CIDB (Construction Industry Development Board) which is a governmental part in charge of construction industry in Malaysia, does not have a role in lean construction system for waste reduction in Malaysian construction projects
The project managers reasoned that Total Quality Management (TQM) is mostly implemented in infrastructure construction projects due to high quality provision in accordance to client instructions at both upstream and downstream levels, which is resulting from a high quality demand for public service
Summary
Egan [1] stated that lean thinking is dominated by an ‘obsession’ to eradicate waste from all business processes. Unnecessary inventory like early deliveries, storage space, safety shocks or over ordering and shortages due to damage of goods stored for too long [6] can be categorized as a pure waste under lean construction concept. Another pure waste comes from unnecessary movement such as machine watching, stretching to reach goods or materials, searching for materials, drawings, walking to fetch materials, drawings, bending, lifting and congestion due to poor work coordination. Conversion processes transform raw materials or components into products and modules [3]
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