A decade of lessons learned: deployment of lean at a large general contractor

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe lean experiments from a period that lasted over a decade. The aim is to provide insights for both industry practitioners and academics concerning what worked and what did not work and to discuss barriers to avoid when taking academic concepts to industry. What makes this paper unique is that we are following the developments inside one company, Skanska Finland, uninterrupted for over a decade. Dr Glenn Ballard was closely involved in the developments and deployments throughout the journey. The paper confirms earlier findings of managing variability prior to other process improvements. At the same time, it is important to understand the minimum organisational level needed when developing and deploying lean methods. During our journey, the most successful deployment was the Last Planner System^®; it has been both robust against market turns but also it has been possible to deploy it project-by-project. Thus, there is no need to wait until the whole company or a large part of it has understood the concept before deployment can start. Supplier development requires a wider scope than just a single project or the duration of a project for successful deployment. The weak or less sustainable deployment of logistics solutions in the construction industry may be because it requires industry-level technology standardisation and data platforms.

Keywords:

• Last Planner System^®
• supply chain management
• construction
• implementation

Acknowledgements

Without Dr Glenn Ballard’s insights and encouragement, our lean construction development and deployment would not have taken place. I am humbled by having had this opportunity and am proud of what we have achieved. I also want to acknowledge Professors Rafael Sacks, Carlos Formoso, and Olli Seppänen who all have advised and reflected on issues with me during our journey. Finally, acknowledgments are due to the hundreds of Skanska employees who have been involved in both developing and deploying lean practices, and particularly the former CEO of Skanska Finland, Juha Hetemäki, who was brave enough to give us a chance in 2004.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Last Planner System^® is the collaborative, commitment-based planning system that integrates should-can-will-did planning. It includes master scheduling and phase planning to define what SHOULD be done, lookahead planning based on constraints identification and removal (the make-ready process) to establish what CAN be done, weekly work planning based on reliable promises reflecting what WILL be done, and learning based upon analysis of PPC (comparing DID against WILL) and reasons for variance (http://p2sl.berkeley.edu/glossary)

2 Practitioners were mostly members of site management, and also from time to time, blue-collar workers.

3 This includes both our self-performed work and subcontractors’ work. Figure 1 we measured only on our self-performed work.

4 A region is the next level of a business stream.

5 The weekly planning routine is a standardized weekly programme where every week on the same day and at the same time certain production planning, controlling and learning take place.

6 A problem solving technique based on asking why successively (at least 5 times) in order to get beyond the symptoms of a problem and to uncover the root cause. http://p2sl.berkeley.edu/glossary

7 Use of takt time in the course of work structuring in order to develop a (phase) plan with smooth work flow (http://p2sl.berkeley.edu/glossary)

8 See http://p2sl.berkeley.edu/glossary for extensive glossary of lean methods.

9 See http://lci.fi/en/

10 See http://lci.fi/en/

11 Platform of Trust. https://platformoftrust.net/en/. [Accessed 31 March 2020].

12 GS1. https://www.gs1.org/. [Accessed 31 March 2020]

13 Note 2020 may not be comparable due to the Covid-19 pandemic.