Contributions of Information Technologies to Last Planner System Implementation

The Last Planner System (LPS) has been in use for over 20 years; however, some of its components remain at a basic level of implementation. This paper seeks to identify improvements in the level of implementation of those components with the use of Information Technologies (IT). In addition, correlation analysis between those components and the Plan Percent Complete (PPC) was performed to determine which components aided by IT use are correlated to the PPC. Results were obtained from a sample of 18 construction projects in which the level of implementation of 16 LPS components and their PPC were measured. Results showed that the group of 10 IT supported projects had a significant improvement in 6 of the components and in the overall level of implementation of the methodology. Also, correlative analysis between the level of implementation of each component and the PPC allowed to identify a positive correlation between 7 components and the PPC, and between the overall implementation level and the PPC. Finally, two components were found to be both correlated to the PPC and improved using IT. These components are the standardisation of the planning and control process, as well as the analysis and systematic removal of constraints.