Integration Of Lean Principles Research Articles

Characterization of the information system integrated to the construction project management systems

The construction industry wields significant influence in the economies of various countries. However, compared to sectors like manufacturing and aeronautics, it has lagged in terms of digitalization of processes and project management advancement. This study aims to explore how the integration of Lean principles, Building Information Modeling (BIM), and Project Lifecycle Management methodologies within an information system can enhance decision-making in construction project management as a complex environment. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to establish a conceptual framework and gather necessary information for designing an information system. The design was based on the viable systems model and the soft systems methodology, from a systemic perspective that encourages the synergistic interaction of these methodologies. The resulting abstract model would facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the interconnectedness of these methodologies, emphasizing collaborative work environments for efficient information management. This approach aims to replace the current isolated application of each of those methodologies and promises improved project management performance.

Lean Project Delivery in the United States Public Sector – History and Current State

Since the late 2000s, public agencies in the United States have been developing alternatives to traditional capital project delivery models in pursuit of better project outcomes. Most public agencies have legal authority to deliver projects through a design-build contract and have been using this contracting method to foster greater collaboration and to integrate the target value design process into a Lean project delivery model. The approaches and practices of four public agencies - San Diego Community College District, University of California San Francisco, the University of Washington, and the California State University System - that have been utilizing this approach are highlighted in this paper. Specific requirements identified to foster the desired collaborative environment, integration of Lean principles and practices, value creation, budget and cost performance, and schedule performance are shared. Metrics from selected projects give evidence that this approach is delivering greater value for these institutions, the design and construction community, taxpayers, and most importantly the internal customers that are using the constructed assets. Knowledge transfer of the resources developed to procure these types of projects and to create and sustain the environment necessary for project success has greatly benefited these institutions and serves as a potential portal for other public agencies to follow.

Investigating the Impact of Lean Leadership on Construction Project Success

Lean has been widely practiced in construction in the last decade. Aiming to maximize value while minimizing waste, Lean tools and techniques are of utmost importance in terms of promoting construction project performance. However, the use of tools and techniques without a change in culture does not ensure the lasting change. At this point, Lean Leadership plays a crucial role for ensuring the cultural change through the integration of Lean principles with the leadership behavior. Lean leadership is a system enabling to develop leaders as well as adopting Lean principles. In the construction industry, Lean Leadership studies are scarce. Hence, this study develops novel components for Lean Leadership revealing the impact of effective leadership on the construction project success. In this respect, a conceptual framework was developed to investigate the relationship between these two factors. An online survey was designed and administered to the lean construction practitioners operating in the U.S. construction industry. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to verify the relation between Lean Leadership and construction project success. The analysis of data indicated that there is a direct and positive association between Lean Leadership and construction project success.

Integration of Lean Principles with Fuzzy FMEA in a Small Scale Casting Industry

Economic growth of any nation is depending on the Gross Domestic Product. To improve a country economy, the industries needs to produce gross domestic products at large rate for export. Every industry has value added and non-value added (waste) activities. Non – value added activities always pulls down the efficiency, effectiveness and profit of the industry which will lets to devastating future. In order to overcome the waste many works and research has to be carried out with the focus on lean implementation. Lean implementation should be carried out progressively to obtain fruitful result. This project has been carried out on a casting industry in which non value added activities such as unnecessary transportation, motion, and waiting and high space conception are identified using current state mapping and current state layout. It is highly complicated to implement all the lean tools in a manufacturing system. So to prioritize only few lean tools which are essential to eliminate those wastes and an integrated model (combine fuzzy and FMEA environment) was used. Fuzzy is to avoid ambiguity in observation and FMEA is to prioritize the cause. After eliminating the wastes, future state value stream mapping is drawn and its performance is compared with the existing layout.

Towards the integration of lean principles and optimization for agricultural production systems: a conceptual review proposition.

Operative planning in agricultural production has historically had the objective of improving yields and quality. Sowing, cropping, and harvesting are usually treated independently, and waste and the sustainability of operations are generally not integrated into operational planning methodologies for agricultural production. This study shows the need to have a clear and precise methodology to minimize waste in agricultural production systems to ensure sustainability. This need is addressed with a novel methodological guide to minimizing waste in agricultural operations, crop maintenance, and harvesting. The proposed methodology is founded on the use of lean manufacturing as a waste-management tool. Lean manufacturing principles allow agricultural operations and the variables that represent wastes to be identified, mathematical models to be built, constraints to be defined, and the cost of waste to be illustrated, as well as its minimization through an objective function. To guide implementation, we propose a conceptual model to explain the construction of a mathematical model that represents the development of decision variables on agricultural operations with the elements to consider and the constraints and theoretical proposal of the necessary objective function. The proposed conceptual model and the constructed methodology constitute a novel development within agricultural production systems that could be used by decision makers and farmers. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry.

Lean-Oriented Layout Design of a Health Care Facility.

In this article, we propose a method that integrates systematic layout planning techniques to lean health care practices aided by multicriteria decision analysis that could be applied to reformulate the layout of health care facilities. We analyze a high-variety sterilization unit of a large public hospital located in Brazil. The unit is currently implementing lean practices, and layout changes are required to provide more efficient materials and information flows. Traditional design of health care facilities is not aligned with lean implementation and its underlying practices and principles. We propose the integration of such approaches to enhance their benefits. To rank and select the best layout alternative, a multicriteria decision analysis method (analytic hierarchy process) is adopted. There are 3 contributions here: the integration of lean principles into traditional health care facility design practices, the use of multicriteria decision analysis to refine the determination of the best layout solution, and the application of our propositions in a real case study.

Saskatchewan's Successful Strategy for Surgical Waitlist Reduction.

By 2015, Saskatchewan's surgical wait times, once among Canada's longest, were arguably the nation's shortest. This paper highlights the principal strategies that were implemented to address the exceptionally lengthy surgical wait times in Saskatchewan's SHR. These included the province's funding the establishment of a fair operating room allocation system, a centralized provincial surgery registry, integration of priority scoring tools and creation of the Saskatchewan Surgical Care network. This coordinated backdrop facilitated the integration of Lean principles, hospital service consolidation, private third-party surgical care delivery services and policy direction setting by the provincial government.

Lean Product Development─Faster, Better … Cleaner?

To address this challenge, lean product devel- opment has emerged to become the leading improvement methodology for companies toward the creation of a competitive advantage on innovation and technology leadership. While lean product development has its origin in the best practice studies of Japanese car manufacturers such as Toyota, it has been further elaborated in defence and aerospace organizations over the last two decades, and recently empirical evidence has become available for successful introductions in sectors different from the traditionally-studied environments. The primary purpose of this work is to untangle the fuzziness that still surrounds lean product development and to ground the key aspects of lean product development based on insights from six studies published in a special issue of the Engineering Management Journal on this topic. This demonstrates how better and faster product development can be achieved through the integration of lean principles with the best of more traditional new product development (NPD) prac- tices, into a holistic system that can be characterised by value-focused and risk-based decision making, the socio- technical integration of people and process, improved project, pipeline and portfolio management, optimized knowledge management, and the creation of a learning organization. Unfortunately, while the increasing global competition offers the potential to improve the quality of life for many, the spirit of faster, better, and cheaper also threatens to endanger the future of our planet as a whole. As the majority of a product's social and ecological impacts are committed in the design phase, it, therefore, seems imperative to investigate the integration of lean product development and eco-design principles. As a result, this work also explores the symbiosis of both approaches through the identification of tools and methods that can support the triple bottom-line goals for a sustainable future of life and business.

Developing Lean – EMS Integration Database for Sustaining ISO 14000 Certification

This paper highlights a methodology to implement Lean-EMS integration system in the case study company. Lean manufacturing is a concept widely applied in industries to eliminate wastes and achieve high business efficiency. The concept implemented through five principles which is called a self-sustaining cycle. EMS on the other side is an international standard for environmental management. It guides organizations through compliance requirements to reduce environmental impacts from business activities and boost up operating efficiency. Researches on EMS implementation have revealed that the system has similarity with Lean Principles. Hence, researchers had integrated both systems to attain both lean and EMS goals. This integration required a management system for continuous improvement. This paper focuses on design, and development of database system to manage the integration of Lean Principles and Environmental Management System (EMS) to aid employees in problem solving through visual indicators for continuous improvement and sustain the certification. The methodology adapted for the study is using the database development steps with Microsoft Access 2010 software. The database which is comprised of five performance measures (each reflects a lean principle and selected EMS clause) from integration framework specially designed and developed for the case study company. The results of the study validated the use of developed database system for continuous improvement. The study is indeed very useful to the company because the developed system is a comprehensive tool, where it can visualize problems in operations that might affect the production flow and EMS compliance. As the problem visualized, immediate problem solving can be done to continuously improve the conditions and sustain EMS certification.

Lean principles adoption in environmental management system (EMS) - ISO 14001

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the characteristic of the lean principles into ISO 14001 and to propose linkage of the lean principles and ISO 14001. Design/methodology/approach: To achieve the objective of the study, literature survey and quantitative research method using questionnaires survey are used. Findings and Originality/value: The findings of this study confirm that ISO 14001 certified company adopted lean production practices. The study also proves that lean principles have positive and significant relationship with ISO 14001 EMS and the linkage can be made between lean principles and ISO 14001 to achieve Continual Improvement. Research limitations/implications: The small sizes of the sample of the participating companies are the main limitations of this study and this research mainly focuses on the manufacturing environment and services industry. Practical implications: This research show that all ISO 14001 companies do adopt at least one lean production practices and the main findings are lean principles has positive and highly significant relationship with ISO 14001 requirements. This is because the integration of lean principles into ISO 14001 will serve practical methods for ISO14001 EMS to achieve the continual improvement. Originality/value: This research is amongst the first to study the combined lean principles with ISO 1400. Based on the current situation, there is no integration within this two management system.

Avaliação qualitativa da implantação de práticas da produção enxuta: estudo de caso em uma fábrica de máquinas agrícolas

Embora a maturidade de um sistema de produção enxuta (PE) esteja associada principalmente à absorção dos princípios enxutos pela cultura organizacional, a avaliação de práticas operacionais associadas à PE fornece indícios acerca da implantação desse sistema. Este artigo apresenta uma avaliação qualitativa da implantação de práticas da PE em uma fábrica de máquinas agrícolas, a qual desde 2001 vem adotando a PE como filosofia de produção. A avaliação foi realizada na linha de montagem de colheitadeiras, usando quatro fontes de evidências: observação direta; entrevistas com 15 gerentes e supervisores; entrevistas com 30 operadores; análise de documentos relativos ao sistema de PE. Essas evidências permitiram o preenchimento de uma lista de verificação com 88 itens distribuídos ao longo de 12 típicas práticas da PE. Apesar das limitações da abordagem qualitativa utilizada (por exemplo, subjetividade na atribuição de níveis de desempenho a cada prática), foi possível identificar pontos fortes e fracos do sistema existente na empresa. Além disso, o estudo de caso também indicou diretrizes para o aperfeiçoamento dos métodos existentes de avaliação de implantação da PE.