Project-based Production Research Articles

Lean and Flexible Project Delivery

The average cost and time overrun of frequent changes in ETO and construction projects is high, and with steadily increasing cost constraints, productivity increase is critical for future competitiveness. Successful lean implementations in project-based production systems have led to great reductions in waste and time to market. However, companies also often struggle with effective customization of lean principles to their changing contexts. This paper extends the scope of the operational system of lean project delivery, initially focused on a project-based production system with the Last Planner System (LPS®) at core, to enhance master planning with options to flexibly handle changes. The research follows the guidelines of Design Science Research, combining the theory and practice of lean project management with results for project flexibility from quantitative models. The main contribution is the proposed operational system, along with the process to evaluate its intended utility, i.e., to increase the ability to quickly and cost effectively handle late changes. This enables the quantitative assessment of the value of planned flexibility in lean projects, before the decision is taken, and illustrates this value for capturing opportunities from customer-driven changes. Insights into the value of design research for the management of project uncertainty are emphasized.

The Worthy Human Being as Prosuming Subject: ‘Projectified Selves’ in Emancipatory Project Studies

The projectified self is suggested in this article as a way to advance emancipatory project studies toward improved understandings of how individuals in contemporary neoliberal societies are urged to become self-controlling, self-improving, self-commercializing, life-compartmentalizing, and deadline driven. We propose (1) a developed theoretical foundation for studies of the projectified self, based on recent writings on enterprising selves, and (2) the notion of prosumption as a concept for how the worthiness of this projectified self is constructed in a simultaneous process of project-based production and consumption. This is discussed in relation to the on-going studies of social media entrepreneurs.

Determinants of the Turnover Intention of Construction Professionals: A Mediation Analysis

The voluntary turnover rate of qualified professionals is both a critical issue and a priority issue that affects organizations in different ways. The construction industry has a set of very specific and unique characteristics that demarcates it from all other sectors. This situation is related with strong precariousness and employee turnover, as well as the extensive practice of subcontracting. Furthermore, the construction sector, with its project-based production, is more vulnerable to voluntary turnover intention. Therefore, we aimed, in this study, to determine the key factors that contribute to the voluntary turnover intentions of qualified construction professionals. In this paper, the impact of individual-level value orientations on turnover intention in the construction settings, focusing on the mediating effect of external prestige and organizational identification, are investigated. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is employed to estimate the causal relationships between the turnover intention and other research variables. The analyses are based on questionnaire responses from 441 construction professionals living in Istanbul. The findings indicate that an individual difference in the self-construal is related to turnover intention indirectly by virtue of employees’ perceptions of organizational prestige. Organizational identification also partially mediated the relationship between the self-construal and the turnover intention.

Algoritma Heuristik untuk Menentukan Biaya Crashing Minimum pada Project Network dengan Dua Jalur Kritis: Studi Kasus Proyek Produksi Electrical House oleh PT X

PT X is a company engaged in the production of the module, ship relay station (Electrical House)as well as oil and gas mining equipment. The company uses a project-based production system in the production process of that equipment. Type of project usually performed is the Engineering-Procurement-Construction (EPC) project. EPC is a type of project that involves process engineering, material procurement, and products construction. PT X main product is a module or electrical house (E-House). Activities can be disrupted by a variety of conditions in the project implementation phase, such as weather and other unforeseen events. These conditions can hamper the process and affect the performance on the field.Activity scheduling and load out process which often suffer from delays caused project deadlines are often past the limit is given by the client. As in the case of E-House project examined in this study, its implementation has been delayed and should be accelerated for 8days. Therefore, the crashing project can greatly assist in adjusting the implementation plan with the actual condition. Crashing project analysis conducted based on project network diagram. The critical path is determined using Critical Path Method (CPM). Based on analysis results, project execution time can be shortened up to 8 days earlier. (From the normal time of 94 days to 86 days) at the cost $ 4.203.093,25.

Discrete Event Simulation Analysis of Product and Process Platforms: A Bridge Construction Case Study

AbstractProduct and process platforms have been promoted as possible enablers of increased productivity in civil engineering. However, such platforms are traditionally applied in mass manufacturing industries where production assets are employed in continuous production of uniform products, which strongly facilitates continuous improvement. The discontinuous nature of project-based production in civil engineering restricts such possibilities. Thus, if platforms are implemented there is a need for methods capable of evaluating the performance of integrated product and production process configurations in specific projects. A possibility, explored in this paper, is to use database-driven simulation. As a case study, a configurable simulation model, based on standardized process patterns and values stored in a platform, has been developed of the production for a bridge concept. The presented results provide evidence that database-driven simulation can support efficient platform evaluation and development by ...

An integrated engineering change management process model for a project-based manufacturing

In a project-based ETO (Engineering-To-Order) industry, design, purchasing, production and quality processes are closely integrated to meet a delivery schedule, cost limitation and quality specification. When an engineering change occurs in a project execution stage, miscommunication of design change may generate a significant cost and delay. This paper suggests a model to capture a design change and share activities for processing change done by each stakeholder. The framework also captures ECR (Engineering Change Request), ECO (Engineering Change Order) and a relationship among them with a result of processes. The data could be used for analysing defects of each process, improving a design quality, and a plan for cost reduction. For capturing, sharing and monitoring every change of drawing element and BOM (Bill of Materials), the model extracts a drawing and BOM from a product structure of a 3D CAD (Computer-Aided Design) system. Extracted data are sent to PLM (Product Life-Cycle Management)/ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system for planning, purchasing, manufacturing and quality control processes.

Project-based production and project management: Findings and trends in research on temporary systems in multiple contexts

Globalisation is challenging almost every aspect of the political, economic, social and technological environment. Organisations, whether public or private, have to adapt their strategies and operations to stay competitive and efficient. Historically, organisations adopted project-based operations as a mode to stay competitive, although the applications tended to be the oneoff type of operations such as construction and system development projects (Edum-Fotwe & McCaffer, 2000). As the world changed from an industrially driven to a more knowledge driven economy and the pace of continuous change became more intense, organisations adopted a project-based mode of operations on a broader scale. The knowledge economy lead to the creation of many service orientated industries. Organisations started facing portfolios of projects where the nature of these projects differed in technological complexity, urgency, customer value and social impact (Gutjahr & Froeschl, 2013). Based on their experience with more technically orientated projects, organisations focused their attention more intensely on new project management methods, tools and processes and not necessarily on the human and organisational interfaces. This paradigm changed however, especially since the 1980s and more and more organisations adopted temporary organisational forms (Bakker, 2010) in order to improve their competitiveness. The contributions in this special edition of the South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences have a common focus on the importance of the human and organisational interface of project-based operations on project success. The purpose of this concluding article is to analyse the findings and recommendations in these papers and to detect trends and future research opportunities in the field of project-based operations.

Linking project-based production and project management temporary systems in multiple contexts: An introduction to the special edition

As organisations in more and more industries look for flexible ways of production in the wake of rapidly changing market environments, project-based organising is becoming an increasingly important mode of organisation (Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995). Whereas project-based organisation was traditionally mainly the domain of industries such as film making (Sorenson & Waguespack, 2006), theatre (Goodman & Goodman, 1976), and construction (Gann & Salter, 2000), a project-based mode of operation has recently pervaded many other sectors in the economy, including software development, advertising, biotechnology, consulting, emergency response, fashion, television and complex products and systems (Grabher, 2004; Hobday, 2000). This increasing prevalence is reflected in an exponentially growing body of research (Bakker, 2010), which has made marked progress in areas such as project-based learning (Prencipe & Tell, 2001), project-based innovation (Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995) and project-based careers (Jones, 1996). As a consequence, research on project organisation has moved from being a narrow specialty domain toward being a broad research paradigm, attending to a broad audience in organisation science and beyond (Sydow et al., 2004). In a fairly recent review paper, Bakker (2010) shows that in the period 1988–2008 scholarly attention, as indicated by publications in books and ISI-indexed journals, grew exponentially (see Figure 1). Comparing the number of publications in the period 1988-1998 with the period 1998–2008, he observed an increase of almost 340%.

The balance of change and continuity in the German construction sector’s development path

Abstract Major deficits, known as innovation gap or renewal paradox, related to the project-based production structures in construction, result in high knowledge waste and efficiency loss. Current innovation dynamics aim at overcoming these structural disadvantages by designing products and services set apart from the one-off project logic. They are heavily influenced by cross-sectoral knowledge combinations coming from the automotive industry, the service sector, engineering or information and communication technology (ICT), as well as by knowledge combinations which stem from integrating different trades into the planning process of a construction project. This paper argues that different kinds of knowledge combinations initiate various degrees of change within the existing sectoral structures. They indicate the sector’s path plasticity.

Continuity and change in interorganizational project practices: The Dutch shipbuilding industry, 1950–2010

The Dutch shipbuilding industry has a longstanding tradition in project-based production. Recently, industry actors have acknowledged a serious misfit between interorganizational project practices, defined as behaviors related to collaboration, and interorganizational project demands, defined as environmental conditions. This misfit leads to a weaker competitive position due to higher communication and production costs, and longer production times. However, the causes of this misfit remain unclear. Among project researchers there is a growing awareness that history has a major influence on contemporary practices in interorganizational projects, suggesting that some of the causes of the present-day misfit may be rooted in the past. This paper studies historical developments of interorganizational project practices in Dutch shipbuilding projects, in order to understand to what extent contemporary misfit in project practices is rooted in the past and results from path dependencies and lock-ins. We answer the following research question: How did interorganizational project practices and demands in the Dutch shipbuilding industry develop between 1950 and 2010 and to what extent do these developments help us understand the current misfit between project practices and demands? Our results show that a web of self-reinforcing mechanisms at least partially explains the current misfit in the Dutch shipbuilding industry. This paper answers to the conceptual call by Sydow et al. (2009) and supplements path dependence literature by showing that self-reinforcing mechanisms causing path dependence can be separated analytically, but are intertwined empirically.

Study on Production Scheduling System for Project-based Remanufacturing

Project-based remanufacturing is a kind of service-driven remanufacturing mode, and production scheduling is one of the important issues for project-based remanufacturing system operation. Many uncertain factors exist in the remanufacturing system which lead to the traditional single production scheduling model and approach can not satisfy the requirements for production scheduling in the process of remanufacturing. This paper put forward a system framework and operation process for project-based remanufacturing production scheduling system from the viewpoint of integration. On the basis, the models of project-based remanufacturing production scheduling system were constructed by web services technologies and the Model-driven architecture was used to construct the production scheduling system. The study result provided a feasible production scheduling solution for project-based remanufacturing system and can satisfy the requirements for the scheduling problems in project-based remanufacturing system.

Resource classification and allocation in project-based production environments

The success of a project strongly depends on the quality of project planning, i.e., on project scheduling and resource allocation. Considering the planning effort for scheduling and resource allocation, an appropriate approach dedicated to the different type of resources according to the maxim 'as accurately as possible, but as loose as necessary' is presented. Following this maxim, resources are characterised and classified by various criteria and a differentiation between critical, non-critical and risk-prone resources is conducted. Planning strategies are derived for selected resource types. Additionally, suggestions are made for the organisation of project structures to achieve a low criticality of the resource pool. The proposed research classification enables practitioners to differentiate between different resource types and reduce project planning effort by maintaining schedule stability for projects. Thereby, the research is based on the experiences of the authors from the construction industry, the major representative of project-based industries, with highly complex projects and planning environments. Non-structured interviews among construction professionals from the industry and science were carried out to develop and proof the appropriateness of the proposed approach.

Business Capabilities of Small Entrepreneurial Media Firms: Independent Production of Children’s Television in Canada

This article investigates business capabilities of Canadian independent television production firms that produce children’s television, an entertainment product area in which Canadian firms have achieved relative success in domestic and international markets. The Canadian independent television production industry is populated by many precarious micro-enterprises. Competition is intense, and the domestic market provides limited opportunities for growth. The authors use the Davidsson-Klofsten model (2004) of a business platform as a framework for organizing enquiry into the capabilities of eight Canadian producers. The research shows that, contrary to much of what is said about firms that engage in project-based production, firm-level capabilities are critically important, and small organizational size does not necessarily imply small capabilities. Furthermore, among successful independent television production firms, project execution is a taken-forgranted business capability, and is not considered to be the most challenging business capability of the firm.

Consequences of competitive bidding in project-based production

This paper discusses the consequences competitive bidding have on lead time in project-based production, such as construction. Earlier studies argued that competitive bidding may significantly increase resource consumption and generate waste in the delivery process, which this paper supports. However, the relation between competitive bidding and lead time has been less discussed. Lead time reduction has long been considered a fundamental objective for overall business improvement. An objective of our study was to understand what contributes to long lead times. The reported findings are from a 4-year study on the delivery process of power distribution equipment, a type of engineered-to-order (ETO) product. The paper concludes by suggesting procurement practices that reduce lead times for ETO products.

Resource Exchange in the Production and Distribution of a Motion Picture

An independently produced motion picture was used as a case study of the resource exchange pattern underlying project-based aesthetic production systems. Several exploratory propositions resulted concerning 1) sources of processual conflict, 2) the nature of resource criticality during the production process, 3) the timing of returns on invested resources, and 4) the commercialization of aesthetic products.