Int. J. Engineering Management and Economics, Vol. 4, Nos.

3/4, 2014 213

Optimisation of construction resources using lean

construction technique

Jyoti Trivedi*
Faculty of Technology,
CEPT University,
Ahmedabad 380009, Gujarat, India
E-mail: jyoti@cept.ac.in
*Corresponding author

Rakesh Kumar
Civil Engineering Department,
SVNIT Surat 395007, Gujarat, India
E-mail: krakesh@ced.svnit.ac.in

Abstract: Lean construction is a production management based approach to

project delivery a new way to design and build capital facilities applied to
construction and changes the way work is done throughout the delivery
process. To facilitate the implementation of lean concepts in an actual building
project an optimisation model is developed. The general perceptions of local
construction industry are compared while examining the lean construction
principles in the simulation model. The lean approach of better flow, reliability
principle improves performance is being supported through providing
standardised workflow directly addressing material and labour resources for
construction tasks. Model deliberates construction resources limited to cement,
reinforcement and manpower of building. It is main contribution to theory and
practice is to present the standardised process flow, and concludes a value to
resources using Just in Time theory; optimisation of these resources is done
using risk solver platform which saves 3.42% of the real price.

Keywords: resource optimisation; JIT; just in time; lean construction;

productivity; simulation.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Trivedi, J. and Kumar, R.

(2014) ‘Optimisation of construction resources using lean construction
technique’, Int. J. Engineering Management and Economics, Vol. 4, Nos. 3/4,
pp.213–228.

Biographical notes: Jyoti Trivedi is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of

Technology, in the area of postgraduate program of Construction Engineering
and Management. She has completed her Masters in Engineering in
Construction Engineering and Management and pursuing her doctoral program
from SVNIT, Surat. She has experience in handling construction projects and is
associated with the institute since 2007. She is involved in teaching
Construction Management, Advance Construction Practices (materials and
technology), Quality Management System, Planning and Scheduling Tools
(MS-Project and Primavera softwares), and Project Information Systems.
Her research interests are in construction engineering and management,
construction materials and technology, transportation engineering and
management.

Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

214 J. Trivedi et al.

Rakesh Kumar has received his Doctoral degree from IIT Delhi, India. He is an
Associate Professor at the Civil Engineering Department, SVNIT, Surat,
India. He is having more than 10 years experience in the area of highway
pavement design and construction and operation and maintenance and also
guiding masters students and doctorate students in the areas of transportation
engineering and planning, construction materials. He has national and
international publications as credentials. His current research interests focus on
the area of pavement construction, operation, rehabilitations, and management.

1 Introduction

Residential and commercial construction is a prime candidate for LC research,

both theoretical and practical applications, for a number of reasons. First, it forms a major
part of the construction industry in most countries (approximately 47% in the USA)
(United States Census, 2004). Second, cost and schedule overruns and rework are
common (Josephson and Hammarlund, 1999; Koushki et al., 2005). Third, construction
management practices in residential construction are largely conventional, and traditional
critical path scheduling and work structuring practices are relatively inflexible (Ballard
et al., 2003). Predetermined and optimised construction schedules and centralised control
structures result in significant and inevitable waste in projects where dynamic change is
prevalent. For example, Bashford et al. (2003) examined the impact of time-gating
strategies, adopted by US housing developers, exposing very long cycle times and large
inventories of work in progress (WIP) that resulted from extreme optimisation of the
individual activities for single-family houses. The relationship between cycle time and
WIP, predicted by Little’s Law (Hopp and Spearman, 1996), was shown to hold at a
macro project level.
The Lean Construction Institute (LCI) states that:
“Lean construction (LC) is a production-management-based approach to
project delivery – a new way to design and build capital facilities. The reliable
release of work between specialists in design, supply, and assembly assures
value is delivered to the customer and waste is reduced. The LCI’s methods are
particularly useful for complex, uncertain, and quick projects. The organisation
challenges the belief that there must always be a trade between time, cost, and
quality.”
A database program called work plan has been created (Tommelein et al., 1999)
to systematically develop weekly work plans. Such work plans are used by crew foremen
in scheduling work packages and allocating available labour and equipment resources.
This systematic approach helps the user create quality work plans and learn
from understanding reasons for failure. Work plan not only allows detailed scheduling
of work packages, it also integrates various kinds of construction data so that
the relationships between them are easy to see. The lean planning philosophy underlying
work plan and the functionality of the computer program implementation are detailed in
this paper.
The focus on the labour resources area of lean thinking has been on improving
planning. There is some limited evidence to support the notion that better flow
reliability leads to improved performance, but the support is sparse. Therefore, this paper
 Optimisation of construction resources using lean construction technique 215

aims to provide a workflow directly addressing labour and material resources for these
tasks.

2 Literature review

During the last 40 or more years, the design and construction industry has suffered from a
number of woes that have significantly affected its ability to deliver projects on time,
within budget, and with the quality demanded by the customer. In short, productivity
has been stagnant or worse. However, during this same period, manufacturing and other
areas of production have shown marked increases. Figure 1 illustrates this dramatically.
While non-farm labour productivity has shown an increase of more than 200% from the
mid-1960s, construction productivity (including the design) has actually dropped.
Coupled with this drop in productivity has been a lack of control of waste. If we think of
any task as having components that add value to the project, are necessary support
activities, or are of no value (waste), we again see a clear difference between current
manufacturing and current construction practices. Figure 2 illustrates this divergence.
Current construction practices are creating only 10% value for each unit of effort.

Figure 1 Construction and non-farm productivity index (see online version for colours)

Source: Blakey (2008)

A third factor is also having a greater impact each year. Construction processes
and facilities are becoming much more complex. This increasing complexity is occurring
with only minimal effort at transformational change in the way we design and build.
Yes, we have more technically capable tools, such as building information modelling
(BIM), becoming available, but are we using these tools appropriately? Have
we developed a coherent approach to the complexity of our projects and processes, or are
we simply compounding our difficulties by replicating past errors in our new
management systems?
216 J. Trivedi et al.

Figure 2 Tremendous waste in construction (see online version for colours)

Source: Blakey (2008)

The history of LC as a movement formally dates from the creation of the International
Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) in 1993. This was the beginning of the movement
to transfer the processes and approaches of lean production that had revolutionised
manufacturing into a theory and system that could create similar dramatic improvements
in the design and construction community. The IGLC’s focus has been primarily on
theory development. It has been significant in laying the foundations for the later
implementation of LC, but has not focused on implementation. With the formation of the
LCI in 1997, the movement began in earnest towards implementation of this approach in
actual design and construction projects. The principal founders of this organisation are
Glenn Ballard and Gregory Howell. Both have written numerous papers on the subject
and have participated in successful LC projects throughout the world. Today, well-known
practitioners and firms in design and construction around the world are actively
participating in the LCI. The continued success of LC projects in delivering capital
facilities ahead of schedule, under budget, and with superior quality has sparked its
rapidly growing acceptance. The coherence of LC with similar efforts for significant
process improvement (i.e., sustainability, evidence-based design, outcome-based design,
ConsensusDocs4, and BIM) has also contributed to the widespread interest in the
adoption of its principles.
Sacks et al. (2007) stated that computer simulation has long been recognised as an
efficient method to improve planning for construction projects (Martinez and Loannou,
1999). The primary motivation for the use of simulation in construction management
is that it provides a cheap, fast, and effective method to evaluate multiple alternative
courses of action without having to suffer the consequences of failure that follow the
unsuccessful courses (Back and Bell, 1995). It is particularly useful for evaluating
the distinct impact of each one of a set of process changes (Farrar et al., 2004); however,
given the likelihood of interactions and interdependence between changes, this is best
done by running the simulation with all the changes and then eliminating each one
 Optimisation of construction resources using lean construction technique 217

in turn to evaluate its marginal contribution (Warszawski and Sacks, 2003). In the context
of LC, simulation has been used to model the impact of pull-driven scheduling for
process plant construction (Tommelein, 1998), to model the impact of process changes
for semiconductor plant delivery (Gil et al., 2004), and in other projects.
Conversely, the use of live role-play management games is rare in construction
management. Role-playing is a recognised training tool in lean manufacturing (Verma,
2003) and has been used in various ways in activities of the Lean Construction Institute
(LCI, 2004). The ‘Parade of Trades’ game illustrates the impact of variability on trade
performance (Tommelein et al., 1999); it can be played live but has also been
implemented in a computer simulation. The simple ‘penny fab’ simulation presented by
Hopp and Spearman (1996) provides an effective explanation of various aspects of flow
in production systems.
The lean management model proposed by Sacks et al. (2007) includes four basic
measures designed to improve stability of information and product flow and to reduce
WIP and cycle times. The author of this research paper concluded that the LEAPCON
management simulation (in both live and computerised forms) differs in many ways from
real high-rise apartment construction projects.
While the LEAPCON management simulation does not reflect any individual real
customised apartment building project perfectly, it does provide a reliable means to
qualitatively compare different management strategies. It isolates and highlights the
impacts of three specific changes, drawn from lean production principles, to traditional
construction management practice for this type of building: pull flow, reduced batch size,
and multi-skilling. Their impacts are magnified in the simulation because actual
construction activities outside of the scope of the finishing works of the apartment units
are ignored.
New management thinking, like that of lean production, has suggested that
better labour and cost performance can be achieved by improving the reliability of flows.
In this context, lean thinking portrays reliable flows as the timely availability of
resources, i.e., materials, information, and equipment. Reliability concerns a state of
consistency, dependability, and predictability, and improving low reliability generates a
more consistent, dependable, and predictable flow.
The variable and changeable nature of construction is a well-known feature of the
industry. Proponents of LC have suggested that the remedy to these highly variable
conditions is a more reliable workflow (Koskela, 1992; Ballard and Howell, 1998;
Ballard, 1999). The workflow does not directly address the necessary labour resources for
these tasks. The focus on the labour resources area of lean thinking has been on
improving planning. The lean principles of lean production as outlined by Koskela (1992)
can be separated into three sample themes:
• identify and deliver value to the customer
• increase output value: pull inventory
• create reliable flow: reduce variability.
Thus, from a literature survey done research depicts to get a good idea of lean concepts
and also lean models is developed for construction projects, but very limited work has
been done in developing LC simulation model using LC principles for commercial
and residential projects. There is no work carried out considering these four principles
as mentioned in the methodology for developing the simulation model. Thus the present
218 J. Trivedi et al.

aim is to develop a simulation model based on the principles of LC for commercial

projects.

3 Methodology

The methodology consists of developing LC simulation model using LC principles for

commercial and residential construction projects. In this study simulation model was
prepared considering limited principles as mentioned below:
• create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface
• use ‘pull’ systems to avoid overproduction
• level out the workload
• standardise tasks are the foundations for continuous improvement and employee
empowerment, i.e., optimisation of resources.
Thus the present study aim is to develop a simulation model based on the above
mentioned principles for commercial construction project.
The simulation model is particularly useful for evaluating the distinct impact of
project problem to identify causes of each one of a set of process changes; however,
given the likelihood of interactions and interdependence between changes, this is best
done by running the simulation with all the changes and then eliminating each one in turn
to evaluate its marginal contribution.
In the context of LC, simulation has been used to model the impact of creating LC
principles, i.e., continuous process flow, use pull system to avoid overproduction and
level out the workload through developing a standardised process flow.
In context of lean approach to the clients, the primary product of value is their
individual apartment, while the public areas of the building are of secondary value. This
contrasts with the general contractor’s view of the project, as completion of the building
as a whole. From the client’s point of view, the production measure of ‘cycle time’
is defined as the period from their first major problems identified in the project of
residential building and then optimising those causes through a simulation model
developed through the Risk Solver Platform in-built in MS Excel.

4 Case study: Principle-1: identification of problems

The project selected is a commercial building in Ahmedabad, Gujarat state in India,

wherein lean is applied and simulation model is developed. It is a commercial building
with 2 basement+GF+9 floors, plot area is 9754.81 sqm and construction area
3,80,590.28 sqft. Total concrete quantity is 11,590 cmt. and total reinforcement quantity
is 1573.48 mt. It consists of 95 offices and three showrooms.
Major problems faced in this project were
• delay in architectural details for elevation
• changes in structural details
• delay in giving payments
 Optimisation of construction resources using lean construction technique 219

• labour shortage due to festivals

• no continuous process flow
• tasks were not standardised.
Data collected from case study in Ahmedabad city, Gujarat state, for a commercial
building and schedule of the project and problems faced as given in Table 1.
• Here, in Table 2, the first column shows the floors of the building and accordingly
second column shows the planned days as given by the client.
• But we can see that there is a vast difference between column 2 and column 3,
i.e., planned vs. actual days which leads to delay in the project.
• Also as part of data collection, in-depth interviews were held by eminent persons
involved in the project and also contractors. In column 4 of Table 2, it shows
the days in which it could be completed as per contractors on that project.
The construction period was 2.5 yr, number of storeys were 2basement + GF + 9
floors which occupied 95 offices and 3 showrooms. Plot area and Construction area
were respectively 9754.81 sqm and 3,80,590.28 sqft (slab area).
• Major material quantities were total concrete quantity 11,590 cmt. and reinforcement
quantity 1573.48 mt.
• Also the major problems due to which these days were not achieved as per the
schedule given in Table 1 and as per the principle – 1 of lean approach in identifying
problems are listed as follows:
• tasks were not standardised
• there was no continuous process flow
• delay in architectural details for elevation
• changes in structural details
• delay in giving payments
• labour shortage due to festivals and disputes.

4.1 Principle-2: Application of pull system: to maintain inventory

In the Project Iscon Elegance the material requisition of cement bags as per monthly
requirement of it in column 2 along with purchased cement bags in column 3 out of
which the dead stock was being calculated as given in column 4 of Table 3. During the
commencement of the project the average cost of cement bag is Rs. 177 which results
dead inventory cost as shown in the last column is Rs. 101916.6 of average total cost.
Here as given in column 5 there is almost 23% higher procurement on an average of the
dead inventory stock.
Likewise, Table 4 gives the final analysis if lead time stock to be kept for three days
on a percentage benchmark of 10%, reducing the higher procurement of dead stock of
23%. The final column 7 of Table 4 of JIT cost averages to Rs. 44214.6 which leads to
reduced inventory cost.
220 J. Trivedi et al.

Table 1 Schedule of the project

ISCON ELEGANCE
Opp. Karnavati Club, S.G. Highway, Ahmedabad
Total basement area = 1,00,000 sq. ft. Shuttering labour = Avg. 42/day
Total slab area of 10 floors = 2,80,000 sq. ft. Rebar labour = Avg. 38/day
Total area of work = 3,80,000 sq. ft.
Days as Actual
Floor Started Planned Finished Problems per plan days
2nd basement 5/17/2009 8/1/2009 8/28/2009 Structural details, rain 76 103
1st basement 8/29/2009 11/8/2009 12/31/2009 Excavation problem 71 124
Ground floor 1/6/2010 2/25/2010 2/27/2010 – 50 52
1st floor 3/1/2010 4/30/2010 5/18/2010 Labour problem 60 78
2nd floor 5/19/2010 6/22/2010 7/2/2010 Payment terms 34 44
3rd floor 7/3/2010 8/11/2010 8/22/2010 Payment terms 39 50
4th floor 8/23/2010 9/29/2010 9/30/2010 – 37 38
5th floor 10/1/2010 11/2/2010 11/2/2010 – 32 32
6th floor 11/19/2010 12/27/2010 1/12/2011 Labour problem 38 54
7th floor 1/13/2011 2/20/2011 2/27/2011 Structural details 38 45
8th floor 2/28/2011 4/5/2011 4/29/2011 Labour problem 36 60
9th floor 5/1/2011 7/19/2011 8/8/2011 Architectural elevation 79 99
Total days 590 779

Table 2 Monitoring of the contractors

Responses from contractors

Days, in which it could
Planned days as per be completed as per
Floor client Actual days contractor
2nd basement 76 days 103 days 60 days
1st basement 71 days 124 days 60 days
Ground floor 50 days 52 days 40 days
1st floor 60 days 78 days 50 days
2nd floor 34 days 44 days 30 days
3rd floor 39 days 50 days 30 days
4th floor 37 days 38 days 30 days
5th floor 32 days 32 days 30 days
6th floor 38 days 54 days 30 days
7th floor 38 days 45 days 30 days
8th floor 36 days 60 days 30 days
9th floor 79 days 99 days 55 days
 Optimisation of construction resources using lean construction technique 221

Table 3 Calculation of cement bags requisition – I

Requirement Purchase Dead stock Average cost of Dead inventory

Month (Bags) (Bags) (Bags) Percentage cement (Rs./bag) cost (Rs.)
Jan-10 1513 2300.00 787.00 52.02 177 1,39,299
Feb-10 2619 3347.00 728.00 27.80 177 1,28,856
Mar-10 2369 2768.00 399.00 16.84 177 70,623
Apr-10 4021 4139.00 118.00 2.93 177 20,886
May-10 1976 2158.00 182.00 9.21 177 32,214
Jun-10 997 1202.00 205.00 20.56 177 36,285
Jul-10 2737 3195.00 458.00 16.73 177 81,066
Aug-10 1547 2798.00 1251.00 80.87 177 2,21,427
Sep-10 2156 2571.00 415.00 19.25 177 73,455
Oct-10 2503 3495.00 992.00 39.63 177 1,75,584
Nov- 1 0 1783 2212.00 429.00 24.06 177 75,933
Dec-10 3843 4429.00 586.00 15.25 177 1,03,722
Jan-11 3895 5226.00 1331.00 34.17 177 2,35,587
Feb-11 4435 5001.00 566.00 12.76 177 1,00,182
Mar-11 1076 1266.00 190.00 17.66 177 33,630
Average 2498 575.80 23.05 101,916.6

4.2 Calculation of reinforcement requisitions

Similarly, the calculation of reinforcement requisition shows the monthly requirement
of steel in column 2 of Table 5 along with purchased steel in column 3 out of which
the dead stock of steel has been calculated in column 7. It concludes the column 7 as dead
inventory cost to be Rs. 9, 05,671 on a rise of 32% as given in column 5;during
project execution the cost of steel is Rs. 38 per/kg given in column 6 of Table 5.
The final analysis results of Table 6 where lead time of steel stock to be kept for four
days on a percentage benchmark of 13% as in column 5 then calculation in column 7
of JIT cost averages to be Rs. 3,33,562 which leads to reduced inventory cost for
reinforcement.

4.3 Principle-3: Standardised process flow: to level out the workload

Proponents of LC have suggested that the remedy for these highly variable conditions of
construction is a more reliable workflow (Koskela, 1992; Ballard and Howell, 1998;
Ballard, 1999). There is some limited evidence to support the notion that better flow
reliability leads to improved performance, but the support is sparse. Thus the standardised
process flow relates to material resource optimisation. The standardised process flow as
given in Figure 3 considers the value of cement and reinforcement using JIT theory
and optimising it through efficient manpower is analysed as per the given framework of
standardised process flow diagram. Here the construction activities of the project are
standardised as per the resource requirement as given in Figure 3 which gives floor-wise
222 J. Trivedi et al.

repetations of raw material inventory and work in process inventory using Risk Solver
Platform in MS Excel. The next section explains the methodology of simulation of the
repetition of the material inventory and optimisation of it through Risk Solver.

Table 4 Analysis of cement bags – II

Requirement Per day Lead time stock Average cost TIT cost
Month (Bags) (Bags) (Day) Percentage (Rs./Bag) (Rs./Bag)
Jan-10 1513 50.43 151.3 10 177 26,780.1
Feb-10 2619 87.30 261.9 10 177 46,356.3
Mar-10 2369 78.97 236.9 10 177 41,931.3
Apr 10- 4021 134.03 402.1 10 177 71,171.7
May-10 1976 65.87 197.6 10 177 34,975.2
Jun-10 997 33.23 99.7 10 177 17,646.9
Jul-10 2737 91.23 273.7 10 177 48,444.9
Aug-10 1547 51.57 154.7 10 177 27,381.9
Sep-10 2156 71.87 215.6 10 177 38,161.2
Oct-10 2503 83.43 250.3 10 177 44,303.1
Nov-10 1783 59.43 178.3 10 177 31,559.1
Dec-10 3843 128A0 384.3 10 177 68,021.1
Jan-11 3895 129.83 389.5 10 177 68,941.5
Feb-11 4435 147.83 443.5 10 177 78,499.5
Mar-11 1076 35.87 107.6 10 177 19,045.2
Average 10 44,214.6

Table 5 Analysis of reinforcement-I

Project: Iscon Elegance

Requirement Purchase Dead stock Average cost of Dead inventory
Month (Kg) (Kg) (WO) Percentage steel (Rs./Kg) cost (Rs.)
Jan-10 1,41,918.03 1,87,398.89 45,480.86 32.05 38 17,28,272.50
Feb-10 1,90,001.15 1,92,095.86 2094.71 1.10 38 79,599.15
Mar-10 77,515.80 152,444.71 74,928.91 96.66 38 28,47,298.40
Apr-10 1,33,029.94 1,91,433.91 58,403.97 43.90 38 22,19,350.74
May-10 1,06,875.64 1.80.073.97 73,198.33 68.49 38 27.81.536.37
Jun-10 87,059.57 95,058.33 7998.76 9.19 38 3,03,952.73
Jul-10 14,294.75 29,838.76 15,544.01 108.74 38 5,90,672.55
Aug-10 26,809.98 27,639.01 829.03 3.09 38 31,503.23
Sep-10 4424.93 6929.03 2504.10 56.59 38 95,155.66
Oct-10 2300.01 2504.10 204.09 8.87 38 7,755.60
Nov-10 947.09 4244.09 3297.00 348.12 38 1,25,285.94
Dec-10 4839.32 6357.00 1517.68 31.36 38 57,671.84
Average 65,834.68 23,833.45 36.20 9,05,671.23
 Optimisation of construction resources using lean construction technique 223

Table 6 Calculation of reinforcement-II

Project: Iscon Elegance

Requirement Per day Lead time stock Average cost JIT cost
Month (Kg) (Kg) (4 day) Percentage (Rs./Kg) (Rs./kg)
Jan-10 1,41,918.03 4730.60 18,922.40 13.33 38 7,19,051.37
Feb-10 1,90,001.15 6333.37 25,333.49 13.33 38 9,62,672.47
Mar-10 77,515.80 2583.86 10,335.44 13.33 38 3,92,746.74
Apr-10 1,33,029.94 4434.33 17,737.33 13.33 38 6,74,018.38
May-10 1,06,875.64 3562.52 14,250.09 13.33 38 5,41503.26
Jun-10 87,059.57 2901.99 11,607.94 13.33 38 4,41,101.84
Jul-10 14,294.75 476.49 1905.97 13.33 38 72,426.71
Aug-10 26,809.98 893.67 3574.66 13.33 38 1,35,837.22
Sep-10 4424.93 147.50 589.99 13.33 38 22419.66
Oct-10 2300.01 76.67 306.67 13.33 38 11,653.36
Nov-10 947.09 31.57 126.28 13.33 38 4798.60
Dec-10 4839.32 161.31 645.24 13.33 38 24,519.22
Average 13.33 3,33,562.40

4.4 Principle-4: Optimised model of resources

Risk Solver Platform offers Monte Carlo simulation, decision trees, powerful
conventional optimisation, simulation optimisation, and stochastic optimisation
capabilities, for problems of virtually any size. It easily models both risk analysis and
optimisation. Risk Solver Platform in MS Excel is described through snapshots for
resource optimisation, particularly for cement, reinforcement, and manpower as given in
Step 1, Step 2, and Step 3 is an input data of Table 3, and concluded optimising the total
cost of the selected resources.
Step 1: Data entry of resources in MS Excel (Figure 4).
Step 2: Selection of risk solver platform and optimisation (Figure 5).
Step 3: Optimised resources (Figure 6).
The previous section of standardised process flow of activities of the project inserts input
resources are limited to material and manpower; i.e., cement, reinforcement, and
manpower as shown in the results in which it is clearly seen that around Rs. 4,36,3000/-
can be saved by optimisation of resources. The, total actual cost in three resources
= Rs. 127,392,000 while the optimised cost of these three resources = Rs. 123,029,000.
Thus the difference is Rs. 4,263,000 which amounts to 3.42% savings in the total actual
cost for three resources only.
224 J. Trivedi et al.

Figure 3 Process flow diagram (see online version for colours)

Figure 4 Step 1: Data entry of resources (see online version for colours)
 Optimisation of construction resources using lean construction technique 225

Figure 5 Step 2: Selection of risk solver platform and optimisation (see online version
for colours)

Figure 6 Step 3: Optimised resources (see online version for colours)

5 Conclusion

The objective of the study was to enhance the understanding of LC thinking in Indian
construction firms, and this is very well achieved by in-depth interviews and discussion
with experts and practitioners in the construction firms. And there were controversial
feedbacks were observed for these principles. Top management of the company has
appreciated this type of improvement. But the middle and lower management were not
fully agreed to these principles. In this study a systematic approach was adopted to
226 J. Trivedi et al.

identify problems with current practices. An in-depth literature study was carried out by
the author to make possible in actual practice. The conclusion of any study highly
depends on perceptions of the researcher. But after data analysis and reviewing the result
obtained from the data, even the middle and lower management were agreed with these
principles converted to resource optimisation. The finding from the data analysis clearly
shows the impact of the lean principles.
Principle 3: Standardised process flow, using the pull system, to maintain inventory
and avoid overproduction.
After applying the JIT in analysing data, considerable amount of material inventory can
be reduced on site. The excess amount of money blocked in dead inventory stock can be
made free and one can achieve a good liquidity in his company.
From the analysis done, it is clearly seen that an average of about 36.20% of the
dead stock of reinforcement is kept on the site every month which costs an average
of Rs. 9,05,671.23/- every month (referred to as dead inventory cost in Table 5). If this
amount is invested in a good place it can generate a good amount of interest which at
present the client is losing. By applying lean principle of using pull technique 36.20% of
dead stock can be reduced to 13.33% and the average cost of dead inventory can be
reduced to Rs. 3,33,562.40/- every month (referred to as pulled cost given in Table 6).
Similarly, it is also seen in the case of cement that average of about 23.05%
of the dead stock of cement is kept on the site every month which costs an average
of Rs. 1,01,916 /- every month (referred to as dead inventory cost given in Table 3).
By applying lean principle of using pull technique this 23.05% of dead stock can be
reduced to 10% and the average cost of dead inventory can be reduced to Rs. 44,214/-
every month (referred to as pulled cost given in Table 4). Because of the time limitation
of the study it was not possible to calculate for other construction material, but in this
study the main cost-effective materials are incorporated. But from the overall experience
from this study and discussion with the on-field experts and practitioners it is observed
that implementing the lean principle effectively reduces wastes in construction and also
helps in maintaining inventory in such a way that no excess money is blocked in the
project which in turn will increase liquidity of the company.
Now taking all the principles into consideration that are as follows:
Principle 1: Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.
Principle 2: Use ‘pull’ systems to avoid overproduction.
Principle 3: Level out the workload.
Principle 4: Standardise tasks which are the foundations for continuous improvement
and employee empowerment.
Thus, after considering the standardised process flow in the study it concluded value of
cement and reinforcement using JIT theory; optimisation of the resources was done using
Risk Solver Platform in MS Excel. The optimised value of resources which has been
calculated as per the snapshot of the Excel file is depicted as given in the snapshots,
in which it is clearly seen that around Rs. 4,36,3000/- can be saved by optimisation
of resources using Risk Solver Platform in MS Excel considering three resources (i.e.,
cement, reinforcement, and manpower).
 Optimisation of construction resources using lean construction technique 227

The, total actual cost in three resources = Rs. 127,392,000 while the optimised cost of
these three resources = Rs. 123,029,000. Thus the difference resulted is Rs. 42,63,000.
This amount is 3.42% amount of the total actual cost which the company paid for only
these three resources. Similarly, if we consider other resources of commercial projects
like tiles, wooden material, sand, aggregate etc. it can save a lot of the construction cost
of the company by using LC principles.

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