The New PAD: A Method to Implement the Lean Construction Principles

Abstract

Since companies face difficulties and barriers that prevent the implementation of the Lean philosophy because of resistance within the sector to the use of new techniques and tools, more transparent guidelines on the Lean Construction (LC) principles must be established to increase their usefulness and dissemination. This paper proposes a new LC principles deployment method called New PAD. The previous method, called PAD (Preparation, Application, Deployment), was evaluated based on previous exploratory studies and a literature review, which enabled its improvement with the proposal of the New PAD, which was applied and evaluated in a case study of a paver block production process. The main result is the proposal of the New PAD, the validation of which revealed a reduction in production time from 5 hours and 25 minutes to 4 hours and 30 minutes, minimizing flow times. The New PAD proved to be a viable method for implementing Lean Construction principles in various construction activities, and there was a positive evaluation in the case study company. Because of the lack of formalized methods for deploying LC principles, this paper validates the New PAD method, which can fill this gap.