https://doi.org/10.24928/2023/0157

Lean Supporting a Framework for the Construction Innovation Process

Bernardo Martim Beck da Silva Etges¹ & Carla Schwengber ten Caten²

¹PhD Candidate, M.Sc. Eng. at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul; Founding-Partner at Climb Consulting Group, Porto Alegre, Brazil, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3037-5597
²2 Full Professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul(UFRGS), Director of the School of Engineering at UFRGS, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7904-0974

Abstract

The construction sector has gradually been restructuring to advance the use of digitalization and taking advantage of Industry 4.0. Recent studies in the IGLC Community have emphasized the need to connect Lean Construction with the innovative movement by promoting and advancing the use of Industry 4.0 technologies. However, it is well known that innovation approaches are successful when they achieve the goal of problem solving. Considering this context two questions are set: (a) Does the innovation process in construction sector understand how to capture pain-points of the industry and in how it organizes itself? (b) Does Lean Construction contribute by offering a conceptual basis for reaching a better understanding of innovation? This paper aims to develop a framework for analyzing and catching the pain-points as the starting point for the innovation process. As a result, a Problem-space-framework (PSF) was proposed and validated in a empirical study. The first question was tackled by conducting a qualitative analysis and holding a workshop, the outcome of which was that eight out of 98 pain-points identified were prioritized towards the solution design. The second question was also fully answered identifying that 89% of the participants understood that Lean Construction contributed to the PSF and most of Lean tools proposed were regarded as having high usability during the implementation phases.

Keywords

Lean construction, innovation, pain-points, problem-space-framework

Files

Reference

Etges, B. M. B. S. & Caten, C. S. T. 2023. Lean Supporting a Framework for the Construction Innovation Process, Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC31) , 81-91. doi.org/10.24928/2023/0157

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