One question that keeps nagging away at me is what is the objective in construction we are seeking to solve with lean or sigma approaches and frameworks?. Safety? Quality? On time delivery? Cost? Cost certainty? Robust engineering? Systems engineering? Building performance? The same for less? More for the same? More for less?

Increasingly lean is framed has having two perspectives: Left to Right and Right to Left. Left to Right lean Thinking looks to the current process, identifies the causes of systemic waste and seeks to eliminate the cause to enable the synchronised flow of information and materials within standard processes.

In contrast Right to Left Lean Thinking looks to the market and asks what innovation in proposition are we seeking to provide our clients and then uses lean frameworks to design end to end waste free capability.

In what circumstances might these approaches appeal to the construction industry? Where and when would it be desirable to be more speedy? More flexible? More dependable? Less expensive? Of a higher performance?

Lean thinking and DFSS (Design for Six Sigma) might enable anyone of these outcomes but adopting lean ideas and tools per se does not necessary mean we achieve anyone of these outcomes in particular.

My personal belief is that the goal of any lean system is to produce precisely what is required, when it is required, defect and accident free, at a target cost. Our challenge is only then to figure out how in any set of circumstances that might be achieved.

What makes construction interesting is that the outputs are infinitely variable but the inputs and processes employed are either highly standardised (building products) or have the potential to be so, but the “employees” have a nasty habit of moving on and/or attempt to work in 2 or 3 “factories” simultaneously, making tight synchronisation a challenge.

Perhaps our focus should be to use lean thinking and DFSS to render the peculiarities of the industry irrelevant. Once we have this licked our only challenge might be to figure out what social structure is necessary to enable safe repeatable standardised work and knowledge transfer.

My final thought: One thing I have to continually remind my team of is our goal should not be to rescue the construction industry any more that it is to fix the entire world of manufacturing. Our goal is to help those that want to be helped to learn how to apply a few simple ideas to keep their people alive and well, improve the quality of what they do and return more value year on year to their clients and owners.

Challenges and builds?

Sin #1: Process improvement is not tied to the Strategic issues the business faces.

Sin #2: The process improvement effort does not involve the right people, especially top management.

Sin #3: Process improvement teams are not given a clear & appropriate charter, and are not held accountable for fulfilling that charter.

Sin #4: The top management team thinks if it’s not “nuking” the existing organization (Reengineering),
it’s not making significant improvements.

Sin #5: Process designers don’t sufficiently consider how the changes will affect the people who have to work in the new process.

Sin #6: The organization focuses more on redesign and implementation.

Sin #7: Teams fail to leave behind a measurement system, and other parts of the infrastructure, necessary for continuous process improvement.

Originally published in the HPM Weekly Update, #15, April 12, 2010