Cycle Time Reduction in Home Building

Even Flow Production is an innovation in residential construction intended to increase the reliability of work flow. That objective is to be accomplished by adherence to a standard schedule for sale, design, construction, and turnover of a home. In turn, increased work flow reliability reduces cycle time, the time required to deliver a home to a customer. Reliability increases as variability is reduced, allowing a reduction of slack in activity durations and of inventory previously needed to accommodate that variability. Increased work flow reliability is also a necessary condition for taking other actions to reduce cycle time.

This paper proposes a method for reducing cycle time within the context of even flow production. The key innovation is the formation of multicraft teams responsible for specific systems and components of a house. Each team is to be helped to: 1) Overlap activities within their phase of the work, 2) reduce activity durations through time studies, and 3) reduce work-in-process through the development of multi-skilled workers.