Lean Construction Implementation
Lean first emerged in the construction industry back in the 1980s after it had gained full acceptance in the West, particularly the US and Europe, because of the dramatic improvement to their manufacturing operations.
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Lean Construction Implementation
4.1 Overview Lean first emerged in the construction industry back in the 1980s after it had gained full acceptance in the West, particularly the US and Europe, because of the dramatic improvement to their manufacturing operations. The roots of lean rests on production management principles developed by Toyota in the 1950s which provided major competitive advantage to Japanese manufacturing companies. The Toyota Production System (TPS) applied precast construction principles to aid in their processes to create a leaner organisation. Since then, lean production practices became a necessity for companies, including those from the construction sector, to improve their performances. Precast construction supports the advancement of lean as construction wastes are exposed throughout the design, production, logistics and installation. However, the construction wastes identified in Chapter Three showed that contractors in Singapore have not reached beneath the surface of lean management to the real foundation of Toyota’s success. Hence, this chapter reviews the literature on the Toyota’s story, the challenges of transferring the lean principles to the construction industry and the differences between issues in the construction and the manufacturing industry will be discussed. This chapter addresses the difficulties during the process of precast construction by exploring how prefabrication can be developed and managed with lean construction implementation.
4.2 The Toyota Story Today, the Toyota Motor Corporation is one of the largest multi-national automakers headquartered in Japan. Alongside other big corporations in the automotive industry such as Ford Motor Company (Ford) and General Motors Company, Toyota have © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. Ong and L. Sui Pheng, Waste Reduction in Precast Construction, Management in the Built Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8799-3_4
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made a remarkable impact based on their sales volume, profits, and production output since it was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda. His father, Sakichi Toyoda, had foreseen that power looms would become yesterday’s technology while automobiles were tomorrow’s technology (Liker 2004). Sakichi Toyoda wanted him to make his mark to complete something that will benefit the world and hence, tasked him to start building the car business in 1930. Sakichi Toyoda is a well-known inventor, whose approach to making his power looms work evolved into a broader system that became part of the foundation of the Toyota Way. As a spinoff from Toyoda Automatic Loom Works set up in 1918, Toyota was established based on Sakichi Toyoda’s philosophy and management approach, as well as Kiichiro Toyoda’s beliefs of the need to strengthen their manufacturing excellence. In 1933, Kiichiro Toyoda tasked his younger cousin, Eiji Toyoda, to set up a “car hotel” which refers to a large parking garage to
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