A Protocol for Assessing the Use of Lean Construction Practices

Bernardo M. B. S. Etges1, Tarcisio A. Saurin2 & Iamara R. Bulhões3

1M.Sc. Postgraduate Program in Production Engineering, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre – RS, Brazil, [email protected]
2Associate Professor, Industrial Engineering and Transportation Department, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre – RS, Brazil, [email protected]
3 Research Fellow, Postgraduate Program in Production Engineering, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre – RS, Brazil, [email protected]

Abstract

The use of Lean Construction (LC) practices has gradually spread in the construction industry. Accordingly, mechanisms are necessary to evaluate their use so as to facilitate identifying strengths and weaknesses in the LC implementation process. This paper presents a protocol for assessing the use of LC practices, which has distinctive characteristics, such as: (a) assigning weighting factors to each practice, according to their degree of importance as attributed by the perceptions of seven experts; (b) establishing explicit conceptual links between each practice and lean principles, (c) selecting practices to be included in the protocol based on a systematic review of the LC literature; and (d) the use of multiple sources of evidence to carry out the assessment, which increases the credibility of the results. The protocol comprises 103 LC practices, distributed over 15 categories. This paper reports the application of the protocol in a residential building project, which allowed identifying its strengths and weaknesses.

Keywords

lean construction; lean production; audit; protocol

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Reference

Etges, B. M. B. S. , Saurin, T. A. & Bulhões, I. R. 2013. A Protocol for Assessing the Use of Lean Construction Practices, 21th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction , 93-101. doi.org/

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