Lean Construction has become a popular concept to improve performance and reduce costs in construction projects. Assessment tools and implementation strategies that focus on lean practices such as the Last Planner ® System, the use of Kanbans, the routine of Kaizens and, recently, the integration with information technology are also common. However, barriers to the wide adoption of lean principles remain and implementation challenges continue to intrigue scholars. Previous studies suggest that barriers to the successful implementation can be either political, economical, social and/or technical, with the focus on lack of knowledge about lean concepts, resistance to the required organisational culture change, and lack of support from top management. Few studies present the lean implementation process from the practitioners' perspective. Using the narrative enquiry methodology, the authors aim to describe how a construction company from Brazil matured from the implementation of lean operational tools to achieve excellence in the lean culture and mindset. Key themes that emerge from this study for a successful lean construction journey are; effort to stabilise the environment, knowledge creation and management, transparency in the process to enable simplicity and shared understanding, and building trust for further growth.
Lean implementation has become a recurring topic in literature. Scholars have studied lean tools, implementation barriers and proposed strategies, audit tools, and maturity models to overcome such barriers. However, despite the importance of these methods, over the years, researchers have realized that "best practices" emerge from a combination of contextual factors and coherent strategic choices affecting workforce management, supplier relationship, and other "soft" factors. Therefore, through exploratory research structured according to business storytelling fundamentals, the authors describe a company's lean journey along a timeline to provide an overview to understand the strategic choices and even the underlying rationale aligning strategic, tactical, and operational level decision-making. Findings suggest that lean implementation is a neverending journey, which requires organization-wide changes for achieving success. Furthermore, strategic choices enhancing organizational stability and predictability seem to have played a crucial role in the company's success in lean implementation, knowledge retention, and capability development.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.