Lean Manufacturing in the Construction Industry?

We get a lot of information from http://www.lean.org/

Thank you a lot for the link!! Will surely help.

This is going to be a tough sell.

One of the reasons is the migratory nature of construction worker employees. In this industry laborers tend to hop job to job and do not give notice when they leave.

That means the labor portion of the team is always in flux with new crew members drifting in and out (high turnover rate). Training is expensive and difficult by itself and only worse when you invest in an employee that may not show up next week.

However, higher up the industry chain of command might hold promise because the turnover rate is lower and the focus on the bottom line is sharper.

Still, I am struggling to find what Lean Manufacturing might bring to the table. The construction industry, by its nature, tends to be very cost conscious already and they have a get-in and get-out as fast as possible attitude.

Lean has been used successfully in the construction industry. See the Lean Construction Institute (www.leanconstruction.org) website. 4D CAD modeling has become a key component, in addition to the lean principles, but the CAD innovation may be a way to grab attention and then bring in the idea of lean as developed by LCI members.

Karen Wilhelm

I have basic questions: What is goal of applying lean project management in Construction projects? What project owners or project managers accomplished in terms of successful project delivery?