APPLICATION OF LEAN MANAGEMENT

Application of Lean Management



Application of Lean Management

Introduction

Projects in remote locations such as the construction of dams, canals, oil rigs and the rebuilding work associated with disaster relief have been undertaken for a number of years now, with disaster relief and reconstruction projects markedly increasing in the past 5 years or so in developing countries. These projects appear to have several features in common:

Multi-stakeholders sometimes form a management, operational and collaborative consortium (a) for the duration of the project.

The work is often conducted under extreme weather/climatic conditions, tight timeframes and limited site accessibility.

The processes associated with the environmental context and potential impacts appear to frequently involve significant and protracted protocols, and regulatory frameworks.

Political agendas (and therefore influence) also appear to be evident on many if not all of these projects.

Increasing numbers of remotely located and often environmentally sensitive sites are becoming the focus of new or post-disaster development work involving potential investors/entrepreneurs/stakeholders or government and non-government agencies. In addition, clients, stakeholders, designers and construction industry representatives involved on these frequently sensitive remote sites now have an increasing 'duty of care', in a global sense, to these pristine environments. The research associated with the use of lean management in the design management and remote sites in the perspective of management and design. The paper also evaluates the many benefits of having lean practices in the organisation.

Theory-building and model-testing was therefore seen to be required in this field/discipline of managing projects on remote, environmentally sensitive and often hostile sites. A body of literature now addresses the application of lean thinking to improving the interface between detailed design and construction production, and this is seen as being conducive to the complex process involved in the design management of remote site projects.

Description and Analysis

The Lean Design aims to optimize the development process of new products and manufacturing processes. The Lean Design is focused on customer satisfaction. The main tools of Lean Design are:

The design to cost: The Design to cost is based on identifying areas for improvement to be made to products in terms of delivery and performance. For this, the design to cost will be based on a benchmark relative to supply products and service competition. This also costing the ideals and the cost gap measure with existing costs.

Standardisation: It is often based on the development of a small number of standard modules, which when combined enable a wide variety of products to meet customer expectations. Standardisation is also based on the establishment of standardized development process (concept development guidelines), with optimisation of interfaces between the various departments involved in development. In this approach innovation through combining new solutions have been validated, not by the use of completely new solutions.

A crucial aspect is that most costs are estimated at the design stage of a product. Often an engineer will specify materials and processes known and insurance at the expense of other cheap and efficient. This reduces project risk, or whatever it is, the cost according to the engineer, but ...