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Waste in the construction industry has been the subject of several research
projects around the world in recent years. Researchers implement different methods
to reduce the amount of waste in construction industry. One of effective methods is
application of lean approach to construction industry. Lean construction is a result of
the introduction of a new form of production management. Although lean
construction is still evolving, the generic principles, techniques and tools of lean
construction can already be applied. Waste reduction in order to improve
performance is one of the basic concepts of lean thinking. In general, project
managers tend to conceptualize waste as physical construction waste, but there are
noticeable wastes in the construction processes which are named non value-adding
activities by lean construction theory. In this paper, the waste quantity of
construction processes in any format has determined through discrete event
simulation based on lean thinking approach. Furthermore, a case study conducted to
reveal the result of lean thinking application in a real manner. Results show that the
construction processes have the high potential of optimization via implementing lean
construction principles and computer simulation.
1. Introduction
Construction industry has been suffering enormously from a serious drawback,
which is Waste (Senaratne and Wijesiri, 2008). All the researches conducted in the
area of construction waste imply the huge volume of waste generated during a
construction project (see Esin and Cosgun, 2007; Wanga et al., 2010). During last
decades, various methods are utilized in order to reduce construction waste and its
effects. One of innovative approachs in this regard is Lean Construction, which was
introduced to construction industry in 1990s based on a successful manufacturing
theory, i.e. lean production.
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Waste
related to
Construction
Site
External
Factors
Excess materials
Safety costs
Clarification needs
Lean thinking
emphasizes
Due to nature
of operations
Defects
Rework
Over production
Transport/handling time
Waiting
Unnecessary inventories
improper choice of methods
Construction
Processes
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4. A Case Study
To test and evaluate the waste reduction due to lean principles implementation
in construction processes, an actual experiment is required. Therefore, this study
conducted a case study by focusing on reinforcement operations of a six-floor building
construction. Reinforcement operation is a repetitive process, which contains several
activities, labors and resources that interrelates to each other. Hence, it seems to be
appropriate process for testing and evaluating lean principles application.
To do the experiment, a safe and standard trend for simulation was regarded. As
can be seen in Figure 2, data collection, model development and validaition constitutes
the main parts of the trend.
Observing the
process
Collecting data
for activities
Model
development
Validating the
model
Applying lean
concepts
Analyzing the
results
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10
Actual 589 595 591 535 564 572 581 589 582 602
Simulated
601 561 569 577 556 574 575 576 556 561
model
St. Dv.
Average
Variation
Cycle time
(%)
19.2
583
13.4
571.11
1.5
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Being late in hauling rebars from a workstation to next one cause waiting time
and therefore it increase cycle time directly. On the other hand, providing rebars
sooner than needed generate the unnecessary storages of rebars which can increase
double handling and distance to working area. Furthermore, extra accumulations of
materials increase the probability of making mistake through tiring workers mind.
To implement the concept of pulling in the reinforcement operations, upstream
workstations such as cutting can be model in the way that produce and send the
products (rebars) to the downstream stations such as tightening only in the right
amount and at right time.
The general practice of mistake-proofing is to find a defect and problem in
current process of working and find the ways not to let the problems happen again.
For example, one of the most important mistakes in reinforcement operations is to
deliver, cut or bending the rebars with wrong size. To prevent this kind of mistakes,
one of mistaking-proofing method is coloring the end of bundled bars in to avoid
misuses. Totally, defective rebars in reinforcement operations includes 5% of all the
rebars. It is predicted that the defective entities can be reduced to almost 1% with
implemeting the mistake-proofing devices.
To evaluate the effect of lean construction principles application on the waste
reduction, the menntioned construction processes waste calculated in both conventional and
lean model and the results are summarized in Table 2.
Table 2. Process waste generation between the conventional and lean model
Conventional
process
Lean
process
Improvement
(%)
18
4.2
76.667
40.13
15
160.45
4.95
7.81
1.2
64.1
4.95
80.53
92
60.04
-4.84
Note : The quantities is the average of 20 replications for both conventional and lean model.
5. conclusion
The research contained in this paper presents a systematic approach for the
application of lean production principles to construction process emphasizing on
construction processes waste reduction. Results of the study affirmed the great
potentiality of such principles in improving construction processes and also reducing
waste generated during the processes.
Although, the construction industry witnesses noticeable share of waste in
construction process, an effective practices for reducing them are performed rarely.
However, lean construction thinking, through considering integrated view of
production, attempts to show the importance of neglected concepts in designing and
engineering of the construction processes. Actually, high share of non value-adding
works in the construction processes brings about excellent opportunities of lean
principles application. Sometimes, changes or modifications in the construction
operations may have to be made in order to better apply these principles. However,
costs of these modifications always will be considerably less than the benefits made by
lean principles.
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Finally, it should be concluded, while this study is just dedicated to one of many
operations in a construction project, it can be predicted that the construction operations
have high potential of optimizing through application of lean principles and simulation
which finally lead to a drastic promotion in construction industry.
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