Abstract
Work flow in lean construction has a significant influence on project performance. Uncertain work flow will lead to waste and reduce labor productivity. Reliable work flow will contribute to improving project performance. We found twenty variables affecting work flow reliability by literature review. In order to identify critical factors of work flow reliability and explore interrelationships among them, we designed a questionnaire to collect data, applied factor analysis to identifying critical factors, and put forward hypotheses on the basis of previous research and applied structural equation model (SEM) to exploring interrelationships among the critical factors of work flow. Final model confirmed nine hypotheses and denied three hypotheses. Besides, this paper discovered other interrelationship among the critical factors except for the hypotheses. The result of this research will help project managers understand work flow easily and take effective measures to improve work flow reliability, which will contribute to implement lean construction successfully.
Highlights
Since Lauris Koskela put forward lean construction in 1993, many scholars have done a lot of research to study lean construction
Lean construction came from lean manufacturing which came from Toyota Production System (TPS)
In order to identify the critical factors of work flow reliability, we adopted a questionnaire for data collection in this research
Summary
Since Lauris Koskela put forward lean construction in 1993, many scholars have done a lot of research to study lean construction. Lean construction came from lean manufacturing which came from Toyota Production System (TPS). Manufacturing plants are different from construction sites. Differences between construction and manufacturing include three features: on-site production, oneof-a-kind projects, and complexity (Salem et al 2006). Uncertainty of construction process is the result of the effect of three features above (Salem et al 2006). We cannot apply lean manufacturing on construction management directly. Lean manufacturing is the “inspiration” of lean construction on the contrary (Becker et al 2011). According to the research above, lean construction refers to the application of the inherent lean manufacturing concepts, principles, and tools on construction management (Thomas et al 2003). Lean construction focus on reducing the construction waste, increasing the value of products and continuous improvement
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