Digital Shopfloor Management in Construction – a Case Study

Abstract

Lean Management is considered a very promising approach to improving productivity in the construction industry. Shopfloor Management (SFM) is receiving increasing attention in theory and practice, as it has an impact on daily routines of all organizational levels. This paper presents over two years of experience in adopting and implementing SFM at a general contractor, which focuses on industrial and custom new buildings. The underlying company is following a clear and organizationally manifested approach toward Lean Management since the mid-2000s. Hence, the SFM methodology needed to be embedded in the already existing methods conceptually, before it could be rolled out. After two years of implementation, rollout to over 80 projects with an equivalent of approx. 1 billion € volume was achieved. Also, a consistent cascade from the construction site to top management was established, i.e. all levels of the organization have transitioned to the new way of working (and leading) inherent to SFM. In parallel, under the application of a strictly agile approach, the SFM cascade was digitized with a special focus on data reuse and integration of systems to ensure consistency, accuracy, and up-to-date information. The overall impact of SFM in the company underlying this case study to date is positive, and an initial approach is proposed to measure the impact in this paper.