When doing construction projects there are four usual lead roles: project manager, project architect, superintendent, and client. There are numerous sources of waste. Taiichi Ohno described seven visible wastes¹, Lauri Koskela named making do the eighth waste, Greg Howell and I named not speaking and not listening the two great wastes, but there is a more insidious waste…the waste that arises when people don't perform the roles that have been declared.

One indicator of a good team is team members who take care of each other.

Construction projects' teams are created new for each project. One usual case is the people playing the four key roles don't know each other when the project starts. Success depends on these people playing their roles as they have been declared. Success also depends on these people having trusting relationships. Good projects require good teams. Not just a collection of people. One indicator of a good team is team members who take care of each other.

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1. Overproduction, waiting, transporting, over processing, excess inventory, excess motion, and defects [ ⇑ back ]

People who've studied Total Quality and Six Sigma are quite familiar with the Seven QC Tools ¹ and the New Seven Tools ². They are all approaches to structured problem-solving.

One of the tools in the first group is cause and effect analysis. In the 70s a variation to the approach was introduced called CEDAC³. CEDAC works for a number of reasons. First, it's a visual approach that encourages people to reconsider what they've proposed and it brings others into the problem-solving process both in planned and serendipitous ways. In my posting Revisitng the Toyota Way earlier this month, I mentioned that I was working with a client team using Jeffrey Liker's book, The Toyota Way. One of the decisions we made was to put CEDAC boards in prominent places at each of the divisions. We've got four more days of group discussions with the book. Following that I will be introducing the team to alternatives to cause and effect diagrams. I'll be using David Straker's book, Rapid Problem Solving with Post-It® Notes.

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1. run chart, Pareto chart, flow chart, cause and effect diagram, histogram, scatter diagram, and control chart [ ⇑ back ]
2. affinity diagram, relations diagram, tree diagram, matrix diagram, prioritization matrix, arrow diagram, and process decision program chart [ ⇑ back ]
3. Cause and Effect Diagram with the Addition of Cards [ ⇑ back ]

Take down those walls! I've been asked about why we're so committed to working in a space without walls. My personal interest goes way back to my first job coming out of college. (Admittedly, this was before systems furniture.) We all had desks in open spaces. Learning in that environment was fast. Collaboration was inevitable.

Jon Miller, writing at Panta Rei, advises us to adopt an open office with no walls if we want to become lean. I've been giving the same advice particularly where design or engineering work is done. The Japanese call this oobeya. Working in an open space accelerates learning and innovation while eliminating rework.

Jon notes the one big obstacle to taking the walls down: the CEO said, "No way." This same closed mindedness pervades lean initiatives. Here are four others:

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The International Group for Lean Construction will be meeting in Santiago Chile this year. This is the 14th consecutive year the IGLC has held a conference. Why is this important? A large group of serious researchers and practitioners have been collaborating and sharing what they have been learning and developing in unselfish ways.

For an idea of what you can expect from the conference have a look at the IGLC-13 Papers presented in Sydney. Some of the papers are a tough read, but do take the time to read and study. Your effort will be rewarded. You can also get a sense of what to expect from my previous reviews of IGLC Papers. You can be sure that there is real value for you in your lean construction and lean project endeavors.

And if you can get to Chile, I'll buy you a Pisco Sour!

I can't get enough of a good thing. Jeffrey Liker's book, The Toyota Way, gets better each time I read it. I am using the book with a client team to introduce them to the theories and practices of adopting a lean approach to business. We are reading two chapters each day. We discuss our previous day's reading for an hour. As we read we answer three questions:

1. What are the author's main points? (What jumps out at you?)
2. How are those points relevant or not relevant to the business?
3. What possibilities do you see that you want to take action with?

There are eight of us in the group. Team members come from a number of divisions and roles. The variety of backgrounds and perspectives helps us explore a range of interpretations and possibilities. When we get together either in person or on a concall we use the questions to start our discussion. Conversations are lively. By the end of the book the team will be mobilized to make change.

There's plenty to like in The Toyota Way. In this latest read I appreciate the quotes Liker selected at the beginning of each chapter. As one of the team members said, "It really helps reading the chapter titles (and quotes)." Try it!

I have a small construction project going on for our business. We are establishing our company's presence in Louisville, CO. The space is not large, a little over 900 square feet. It is being modeled as oobeya — one big room — as a way of understanding what it is like to plan, learn, innovate, and collaborate in a Toyota-like environment.

We're having our challenges getting the space built out. We hired an outstanding interior designer, Renee Sherman, Oglesby Sherman Design, to guide us through the process. The developer offered us a bare bones space. Renee helped us anticipate our different uses and how we could shape the space to support those uses. Of course, that meant starting over with the build out and taking the delays while we researched sources of materials and specialty contractors who could do the installations. We're now looking at a mid-to-late February move in.

I've learned (again) a number of lessons: Read the rest of this entry ¶