Developing & Testing a Value Stream Map Simulation: Helping the Construction Industry Learn to See

Resources to interactively teach value stream mapping (VSM) to construction practitioners and students of lean are currently limited. While traditional value stream mapping methods make sense for those with a background in manufacturing or industrial engineering, they are arguably neither intuitive to construct nor easy to understand by those in the building industry. There is a need for a value stream mapping method that implements and communicates in ways that are already familiar to those in construction. The objective of this research is to develop and test a VSM simulation as a preliminary study that makes intuitive sense for those in the construction industry and so can serve as a training method for the identification and removal of waste. A virtual simulation was developed and tested using a design research methodology to facilitate scalability and to enable on-line play.