Research in Lean Construction

A group of graduate student researchers meet regularly with Professors Tommelein and Ballard to discuss ongoing research into lean construction. We maintain a password-protected website at Lean Construction Group.

Current research topics include:

• Work structuring
• Supply chain management
  • Reducing lead times for engineered to order products
  • Role of distributors in the age of e-commerce
• Sheet metal shops
• Tolerances

Learning about Lean Construction

What is Lean Construction?

The objective of lean construction is to better meet customer demands and dramatically improve the Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) process as well as product.

Lean construction embraces new principles and methods for product development and production management specifically tailored to the AEC industry. It advocates the simultaneous consideration of product and process development, using concurrent engineering tools among others.

Lean construction principles include:

• Creating reliable work flow: e.g., the Last Planner should make only quality assignments;

• Reducing waste; Taiichi Ohno, who articulated the lean production philosophy and implemented it in Toyota's production system, classified sources of waste as follows (8 added by Womack and Jones 1996):
  1. Defects in products;
  2. Overproduction of goods not needed;
  3. Inventories of goods awaiting further processing or consumption;
  4. Unnecessary processing;
  5. Unnecessary movement of people;
  6. Unnecessary transport of goods;
  7. Waiting by employees for process equipment to finish its work or for an upstream activity to complete;
  8. Design of goods and services that fail to meet user's needs.

• Promoting process transparency by clearly documenting, updating, and constantly reporting the status of all process flows to all involved;

• Pulling work, materials, and information through the production system to meet specific customer needs;

• Reducing overall process cycle time by minimizing each machine's change-over time; and

• Synchronizing and physically aligning all steps in the production process.

Lean construction principles and methods are akin to those defining lean production that proved to be so successful in manufacturing (see for instance The Machine that Changed the World by Womack, Jones, and Roos (1991) and Lean Thinking by Womack and Jones (1996)).

Lean Construction Glossary

Confused about terms? Click here to view our glossary.

Lean Construction Courses at U.C. Berkeley

Courses in lean construction are offered by Professors Iris D. Tommelein and Glenn Ballard, who teach in the Construction Engineering and Management Program at the University of California, Berkeley. We have adapted our course materials so the classes form a sequel. Not all we teach pertains specifically to lean construction; a number of concepts, tools, and techniques belong to the more mainstream teaching materials on construction management, and on production and operations engineering. Nonetheless, we convey as much as we know about lean construction and learn as we go along. Consider taking a semester-long course:

• CE290M Improving Performance in Engineering and Construction - offered in Fall
• CE290N Advanced Construction Engineering - offered in Spring

If you'd like to get started on reading, visit the lean construction reader compiled by the Lean Construction Institute.

Other Courses on Lean Construction

Parade of Trades Game

Click here for a free download of our Parade of Trades Game, implemented on the computer by doctoral candidate Hyun Jeong Choo, and a brief description of the game's purpose and use.

| Prof. Iris D. Tommelein | CE&M Program | CEE Department | U.C. Berkeley | Lean Construction Institute |