Critical analysis of Lean Construction measuring tools

Abstract

The Lean Construction philosophy emerged to assist overcome the challenges in optimizing the productive processes of companies. As an effort to quantify the application degree of Lean philosophy in the civil construction companies, several measurement tools were created. In order to discuss the effectiveness of these tools into measuring the presence of the Lean philosophy in construction sites, the present study performed a critical analysis of its methodological procedures, based on four aspects: ‘questionnaires and forms’, ‘answering system’, ‘data collection methodology’, and ‘results’. Although it was not possible to investigate measuring tools from other countries, it was concluded that, among Brazilian methods, the one developed by Pereira (2012) is the most suitable for use since it presented just few problems in its formulation. This way, it is possible to do the intended measurement with assertiveness, substantially contributing to civil construction development.

Maturity Models to evaluate Lean Construction in Brazilian projects

“…Recently Lucena and De Mori (2018) quotes and confirm other authors that stated no extensive application of LC in the Brazilian industry nowadays. This research analyzes six MM through ten parameters distributed in four topics.…”

“…Carvalho's (2008) method had a great performance about the utility of the results for processes optimization. Pereira's (2012) method was considered the most efficient MM to measure LC use (Lucena and De Mori, 2018).…”

Lean Construction and Maturity Models: Applying Five Methods

“…The applied MM have distant origins, this shows how different countries are concerned about assessing performance in LC philosophy and country progress in this journey. Lucena and De Mori (2018) analysed six Brazilian MM and concluded that DOLC method was an ideal application to evaluate Brazilian companies, not just each project. Carvalho and Scheer (2017) compiled papers that applied DOLC method in Brazilian projects and observed low adhesion and knowledge of the companies to LC.…”

Proposal and evaluation of a method to implement the lean construction principles

“…Even with the spread of the lean production concepts, a gap can be observed between the concepts and an effective method of implementation in construction companies (Alves et al 2012;Tillmann 2014;Tommelein 2015), as well the literature presents only Lean Construction principles diagnostics through the companies (Nesensohn et al 2014;Bygballe and Sward 2014;Christoph 2014;Erol et al 2017;Lucena and De Mori 2018). Such as the application of lean tools, such as 5S, Six Sigma, Kaizen, Kanban, and others, in construction environment (Kemmer et al 2006;Marzouk et al 2011;Shang and Sui Pheng 2013).…”