ABSTRACT

In the Lean Construction literature, there are three main activities involved in the design of a production system: Production System Design (PSD), Phase Scheduling (PS) and Work Structuring (WS). These are deployed in Lean projects in different contexts, and their aim is to minimise waste, increase value and deliver the project. The tools recommended by the Lean community to designing Lean production systems include Location-based Scheduling (LBS).

LBS is a term used in construction planning for techniques such as Line of Balance (LOB), Flowline (FL) and Takt-Time Planning (TTP) due to their emphasis on scheduling activities based on location. Although these techniques have been in use by Lean Construction practitioners and academics, there is still a need to fully understand their capabilities.

In this chapter, clarification will be given on the three activities used to design production systems, descriptions of the three LBS tools and a comparative analysis of them. Finally, there will be discussions about the appropriate contextual application of the LBS techniques in the production system design activities that are expressed through a novel conceptual framework.

This chapter was developed based on the literature review of the main terms and tools applied for production system design and location-based scheduling. The activities to design Lean production systems were compared regarding the focus of designing activities; collaboration for decision-making; project stage when it is developed; and the output for production planning and control. The authors also carried out a comparative analysis of visual representation of the plan; network used to devise the plan and what the activities pace represents; types of buffers used and the balancing process; and the contextual deployment of the LBS techniques. Finally, the production system design activities were related with the location-based tools and their relationship was summarised in a Venn diagram.

The results are significant in that they show that different production system design activities require different location-based planning tools in order to maximise their effectiveness. Moreover, the context of use of the production design varies according to the level of project uncertainty, information availability and participants’ commitment to the construction planning. As such, this chapter is contributing new knowledge in the understanding of production design activities and LBP tools from a theoretical as well as from a practical perspective for application in practice.