A Quantitative Analysis of the Implementation of the Last Planner System in Brazil

Rodrigo Cremonesi Bortolazza1, Dayana Bastos Costa2 & Carlos Torres Formoso3

1M.Sc. candidate, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Building Innovation Research Unit (NORIE), Osvaldo Aranha Av., 99, 3º floor, Porto Alegre–RS, Brazil, fone: +55 51 3316 3959, e-mail: [email protected]
2M.Sc., Ph.D. candidate and researcher assistant, UFRGS/NORIE, e-mail: [email protected]
3Ph.D., Associate Professor, UFRGS/NORIE, e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

In Brazil, the Last Planner system has been implemented since 1996 in a large number of construction sites. However, most research studies developed so far have emphasized the analysis of qualitative data, based on single or on a small number of case studies. Therefore, it seems that a good opportunity exists to learn more from the implementation of the Last Planner System by analysing data that are available from large samples of projects. A database was built including data from 115 projects, which have been investigated in previous research projects at the Building Innovation Research Unit (NORIE) of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). This sample of projects was divided into three market sectors (residential and commercial building, industrial building and low-income housing). The PPC (percentage of plans completed) indicator was analyzed for all those projects. In 51 of them the causes for the noncompletion of work packages was also investigated. Moreover, a checklist of production planning and control good practices has been proposed to assess the application of some core ideas of the Last Planner system. Data mining tools, like decision trees and neural networks were also evaluated in searching for interesting patterns in the sample of 51 projects. Preliminary results on the causes for non-completion of work packages indicate that most projects still have limited success in the implementation of look-ahead planning. The paper also presents future steps in this research project.

Keywords

Last Planner, Performance measurement, Data mining.

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Reference

Bortolazza, R. C. , Costa, D. B. & Formoso, C. T. 2005. A Quantitative Analysis of the Implementation of the Last Planner System in Brazil , 13th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction , 413-420. doi.org/

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