Brazilian Actions for Continuous Construction Flow
July 25th, 2006 by HalLean concepts of establishing flow by pacing activity has made its way to construction.
Actions to Influence Continuous Flow
Jammara Rossi Bulhoes, et al (presented by Flavio Picchi)
Value stream mapping was adopted to identify components of inventory, levels of work in process, and delivery delays. Used the TPS house to shape an implementation approach for a large shopping plaza in Brazil. They started with standardized work.
Changing minds of engineers was the first challenge.
Engineers had a large batch mindset. "Talking to them about lean concepts — small batches and flow — was a great fight." Eventually they adopted a small batch approach that was paced (matched) to other work. They then brought a focus to reliability at every stage of activity. Buffers were established for rain delays. They also used a five why approach for the problems they incurred. Results:
- Cycle time reduced
- Waste reduced. Productivity was 2x the budget and 4x the reference case.
- Far more reliable workflow
Still, people thought that large batches might improve performance!
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