Benefits of visual management in construction: cases from the transportation sector in England

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the benefits of Visual Management (VM) systems in transportation construction projects in England. Design/methodology/approach Following a comprehensive literature review, the benefits of VM were investigated through action and case study research executed within two construction projects in England. Findings The main findings are; VM can contribute to (i) increased self-management, (ii) better team coordination, (iii) better promises or an increasing Plan Percent Complete (PPC), (iv) easier control for the management, and (v) improved workplace conditions in the transportation sector. It is important for the management to obtain the engagement of their workforce for VM through increased participation and demonstrating the actual benefits. However, managerial monitoring and control on the systems should not be underestimated. Originality/value The transportation sector in England has been systematically deploying lean construction techniques in its operations for a while. One of those lean techniques is a close-range visual communication strategy called Visual Management (VM). The literature on the VM implementation in construction is scarce and generally limited to the building construction context. This paper documents the benefits of VM systems for the transportation sector by using data captured through both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods. The paper also identifies a set of recommendations for similar research efforts in the transportation context in the future.

The Role of Digitalized Visual Management to Empower Selfmanaged Crews in Construction Projects

“…Nevertheless, even with positive results, the research and practice on the topic is in very initial stages, and studies continue to highlight the centralized nature of the construction industry and the silos that characterize its information management (Dave et al 2008;Tezel et al 2016;Koskela et al 2018). Once again, aiming to assess the research development inside the lean community, the search engine of the IGLC website was used to search through all published papers at the 27 international conferences.…”

“…The construction industry has adapted different approaches from the manufacturing industry and army forces to tackle these problems, such as the Toyota Production System (TPS), lean management approaches, visual management (VM) and situational awareness (SA). Nevertheless, the adoption of these approaches is scattered throughout the industry, and case studies usually focus on the implementation of one concept at a time (Tezel et al 2016;Thomas et al 2014;Gheisari et al 2010), resulting in a deficiency of connection among concepts and how they can relate and impact construction work when implemented together.…”

“…VM as a part of lean thinking has been an important management approach to increase information distribution, bring more transparency to the construction site and enable pull production approaches with more simple and targeted communication devices (Koskela et al 2018). The adoption of traditional VM brings benefits that have been measured in different case studies (Tezel et al 2013(Tezel et al , 2016. On the other hand, case studies also detected problems: the information available is often outdated and outside of workers' reach (Tezel et al 2011).…”

Investigation of the Use of Lean Construction Practices in Transportation Construction Projects

“…Hanna et al (2010) specified that state highway agencies were not using Lean practices, e.g., JIT, LPS, VSM, and pointed out tools that could improve the delivery of these projects. Tezel et al (2016) described the benefits of using visual management practices and tools, e.g., 5S, performance boards to keep track of metrics and manage traffic, in the transportation sector and their results including increased coordination, self-management, and, improved site conditions to name a few.…”

Identifying Value Enhancing Factors and Applicability of Visual Management Tools

“…Moreover, the successful application of visual management in construction has been proven in the transportation sector, building sector and industrial sectors (Tezel & Aziz, 2017;Tezel et al, 2013, Tezel et al, 2016. The applicability of the visual management tools in Indian construction sector is explored in this research paper using relation matrix.…”