Improvement tools in the UK construction industry

Delgado-Hernández, David Joaquín; Aspinwall, Elaine

doi:10.1080/01446190500204705

Cited by 35 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…According to Denscombe (2003) and Delgado-Hernandez and Aspinwall (2005), questionnaires are most appropriate where responses are required from a large number of geographically disparate respondents. Burns (2000) also believes that questionnaires can improve the reliability of the research study due to their use of standardised responses from all participants, whereas Saunders et al (2009) suggested that the questionnaire approach is "one of the most widely used data collection techniques".…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The perspective on sector or market is quite interesting as previous studies on improvement tools and techniques have tended to concentrate their focus on singular/limited sectors or countries. For example, Qui and Tannock (2010) and Esain, Lethbridge, and Elias (2011) focused on China and Wales respectively while Delgado-Hernandez and Aspinwall (2005) focused on the construction industry. Therefore, while studies such as Johnston and Clark (2008), and Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons (2011) have suggested that improvement tools and techniques have applicability in both public and private sector organisations, there is a dearth of comparative studies that have studied cross-sector adoption.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a result, numerous iterative improvements were made to the questionnaire. The GBN members agreed to promote the questionnaire in their respective countries and also offered to translate the questions into their local languages, thereby minimising the "lost in translation" effect identified by Delgado-Hernandez and Aspinwall (2005). Three months were spent modifying the questionnaire via input sought from other GBN members as well as from the academic community.…”

Section: Questionnaire Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to further minimise the potential misinterpretation of the improvement tools and techniques across the various countries, the researchers ensured a definition for each tool was displayed within the questionnaire, as suggested by Delgado-Hernandez and Aspinwall (2005). For example, Six Sigma was defined as "…a measured and fact-based approach to reducing process variation and improving performance" and 5S was defined as "…a method for organising a workplace, especially a shared workplace (like a shop floor or an office space), and keeping it organised.…”

Section: Questionnaire Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Business improvement tools and techniques: a comparison across sectors and industries

Tickle

Adebanjo

Mann

et al. 2014

International Journal of Production Research

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the awareness, usage, perceived effectiveness and potential future use of improvement tools and techniques via two sets of comparisons: between public and private sector organisations and between manufacturers and service organisations. The need for the study was driven by the current lack of understanding of the extent of improvement tools and techniques adoption on a global scale. A questionnaire survey of 453 respondents from over 20 countries was conducted and the quantitative data was analysed through use of the IBM SPSS software package. The study's findings indicated that there are no significant differences between both sets of organisations for the majority of improvement tools and techniques. However, this study has shown that public sector organisations are more likely to adopt some improvement tools and techniques in comparison to their private sector counterparts. Similarly, service organisations are also more likely to adopt some improvement tools and techniques than their manufacturing counterparts. These results contradict the conventional perception that improvement tools and techniques are used more often by the private sector and manufacturing organisations.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Questionnaire Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Questionnaire Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Business improvement tools and techniques: a comparison across sectors and industries

Tickle

Adebanjo

Mann

et al. 2014

International Journal of Production Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This approach has been suggested by a number of scholars [31,32] especially in the field of e-business tool adoption [33][34][35]. The survey was sent to over 600 managers in over 40 countries and was made available online.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

E-business capabilities in developed and developing countries: Different or the same?

Adebanjo

Tickle

Lin

et al. 2016

2016 IEEE International Conference on Management of Innovation and Technology (ICMIT)

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2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Abstract -This paper compares the e-business capabilities in developed and developing countries; in particular the awareness and usage of e-business tools and the barriers / drivers of adoption. We surveyed 136 managers of organizations (in both developed and developing countries) and analyzed the responses via the SPSS Statistics software package. A number of statistically significant differences were found between the 2 sets of organization; interestingly, however, a number of areas showed minimal difference between the 2 sets of organizations, suggesting the gap between them beginning to close.Keywords -e-business, developed vs. developing countries, operations managers I. INTRODUCTIONThis paper studies the use of e-business tools as well as the drivers and barriers to their adoption across both developed and developing countries to investigate differences between the 2 sets of countries. E-business adoption has moved from a 'nice to have' to a necessity due to the vital role it plays in global businesses [1,2], with many suggesting that the question is not whether or not e-business tools should be adopted but how this adoption should be conducted [3,4]. E-business tools offer a large array of benefits to those that implement them; examples include increased competitive advantage, improved communication, improved agility, increases in efficiency and access to new markets [5,6]. Similar benefits of adoption include reduced costs and increased process improvements [7,8] as well as improvements in inventory management, distribution and production planning [9,10].In recent years there has been an increased interest in the role that e-business plays in the field of operations and supply chain management [11,12]; it is for this reason that this paper investigates e-business tools from an operations management perspective. Much has been written about the benefits of e-business tool adoption, however there are a vast array of different tools available to organizations [7] and as such there is currently limited understanding on which tools are used most often and which are the most effective. Similarly, there has been limited research on e-business tool adoption outside of developed countries such as those in Europe, North America and Japan [1]. Those studies that have looked at the diffusion of e-business tools have concluded that developing countries lack the levels of e-business implementation present in developed countries [1,13]. There has, however, not been a single study confirming these supposed differences. All of these factors serve as motivations for conducting this study. A. The e-business toolsAs this study investigates e-business ...

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Improvement methods in U.K. and Mexican construction industries: a comparison

Delgado-Hernández

Aspinwall

2007

Quality & Reliability Eng

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The application of improvement methods in the manufacturing industry has proven to be a valuable feature of continuous improvement activities. To establish whether the same is true in the construction sector, a survey was conducted to assess the current level of use and the perceived importance of such methods in both the U.K. and in Mexico. Following a broad review of the literature, various improvement tools, techniques and methods were recognized and grouped using affinity diagrams. A questionnaire was designed to collect the information and served as a basis for comparison. The results of the survey showed that, in terms of use, computer networks, laws and regulations, teams and teamwork, inspection and planning software were common practice in the U.K. while computer networks, customer satisfaction surveys, design software, Gantt charts and laws and regulations were commonly used in Mexico. A similar set of methods were perceived as highly important except that inspection and planning software were replaced by customer satisfaction surveys and customer complaints, respectively, in the case of the U.K. companies and Gantt charts by inspection in the case of Mexico. When comparing the mean use and the mean perceived importance for each method in both countries, significant differences were found mainly in the use of those for gathering and organizing customer needs, those aimed at planning and controlling quality and those for technology.Before considering the different methods that could be applied in the industry, construction projects and processes will be defined. There are two categories of construction projects: building and civil engineering 4 . While the former refers to the construction, enhancement and maintenance of both residential and nonresidential buildings, the latter is concerned with the construction of an infrastructure, for example roads, bridges and dams.At the beginning of the 1990s, Hughes 14 analysed more than five different sources in which the construction process was divided into stages. He recognized a variety of decision points, for example inception, feasibility analysis, contract, etc. More recently, various approaches have been adopted by the industry, such as designbuild, design-bid-build and construction management at risk 15 . Nevertheless, in this paper the traditional five stages reported by Austen and Neale 16 based on recognized international practice will be adopted to explain the construction process. These five stages are briefing, designing, tendering, construction and commissioning. The process usually works as follows.• Briefing. A client approaches an architect and sets the objectives of the project. • Designing. The architect develops a plan which is passed onto engineers to design.Since it is well known that the response rate for postal surveys is low 39 , follow-up letters were sent to both the U.K. and the Mexican companies in an attempt to increase it. In the event, 72 replies or 24% were received from the U.K. but only 16 or 5.3% from Mexico. While the former...

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Improvement tools in the UK construction industry

Cited by 35 publications

References 23 publications

Business improvement tools and techniques: a comparison across sectors and industries

Business improvement tools and techniques: a comparison across sectors and industries

E-business capabilities in developed and developing countries: Different or the same?

Improvement methods in U.K. and Mexican construction industries: a comparison

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