the application of lean construction to reduce waste in construction flow process
DESCRIPTION
This was the PDF copy of my Master Thesis in Year 2004. Actually I was new or should I say most of us were new to Lean Construction & Lean Thinking in construction here by then. I only managed to find 1 reference book while abundent of references can be found online by then. I don't know how much had changed since but sure I am try my very best to practice lean thinking on my job now. Open for comments and I did notice some errors in the conclusion. I sure hope the sample group were bigger while I was doing the research by year 2004. Hopefully more research and studies were carried out since then.TRANSCRIPT
The Application of Lean Construction to Reduce
Wastes in Construction Process Flow
by
TAN WEE LENG
Thesis submitted in fulfilment of
the requirements for the award of
the Degree of Master of Science (Project Management)
School of Housing, Building & Planning,
Universiti Sains Malaysia
2004
i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my greatest gratitude to my research supervisor Dr. Mohd Wira
Mohd Shafiei for his mentor and encouragement during the whole process of preparing
this thesis. I would like to thank my family and friends who were always there for me
whenever in needed the most. Special thank to my employer, Mr. Chew Hock Jin who
supported and tolerated me throughout my whole Master program in USM, to my sister
Lee Kheng who helped my in my SPSS analysis, and last but not least, to all the
respondents who took part in completing and returned the questionnaires for this
research.
Without all of you, this thesis would not be existed in the first place. Thanks a lot.
Regards,
Tan Wee Leng
April 2004
ii
ABSTRCT
There are a lot of non-value adding activities or wastes in construction practices and
many among those were left unnoticed or unattended. Previous studies have shown that
there were significant amounts of values loss due to construction process flow wastes
and tremendous productivity improvements can be achieved by simply targeting at
reducing or eliminating those wastes and/ or improve the process flow.
This thesis was conducted on the basis to study the waste concepts and the level of
“leanness” in local construction practices based on philosophies and principles drawn
by Lean Construction. A quantitative survey was carried out through structured
questionnaires over a randomly selected group of managerial personnel in construction
activities.
The results from the study show that the respondents have a relatively low recognition
over contributory time wastes group compared to direct conversion wastes group and
non-contributory time wastes group as categorised in the study. The correlation analyses
also show almost no significant inter-relationships between wastes recognition and
wastes controlled, wastes recognition and wastes occurrence frequencies, and wastes
controlled and wastes occurrence frequencies for those 3 waste categories (except 1
negative significant case are recorded on waste recognition vs. waste controlled for
contributory time wastes). This has suggested that a very high level of subjectivity
possessed by the respondents on recognising, controlling and witnessing the actual
occurrence of construction wastes where majority cases are recorded with non-
consistent pairs relationships. In this study, a cluster of waste cause variables have also
been examined against their likelihood to impact on the construction processes as well
as relating those variables directly to specific construction wastes. This will serve as a
good exercise to expose the root sources to particular construction wastes.
In conclusion, the outcomes of the research suggested that there still have rooms for
construction process improvements with the application of lean construction and proper
waste concepts instilled to all level of construction personnel and processes.
iii
CONTENT PAGE
pp.
Acknowledgement
i
Abstract
ii
Abstrak
ii (a)
Content Page
iii
List of Tables
vi
List of Figures
viii
List of Appendixes
x
1) Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1) Research background
1.2) Problem statement
1.3) Research aim
1.4) Research objectives
1.5) Research scopes
1.6) Research limitations
1.7) Research methodology
1.8) Research significance
1.9) Thesis structure
1.10) Summary
1
3
4
5
6
7
8
11
12
14
2) Chapter 2: The Problems in Construction and The Trends in
Improvement Strategies
2.1) Introduction
2.2) Problems in construction
2.3) Manufacturing as source of references and innovations
2.4) Emergency of new production philosophy in manufacturing
2.5) The concept of new production philosophy
2.6) The impacts of new production philosophy in construction
2.7) The impact of new production philosophy in Malaysia construction
industry
15
17
18
20
24
25
28
iv
pp.
3) Chapter 3: The Concepts of Production and The Principles Behind New
Production Philosophy
3.1) Introduction
3.2) The concept of production
3.2.1) Transformation concept
3.2.1.1) Core principle of transformation concept
3.2.1.2) Critiques on transformation concept
3.2.2) Flow concept
3.2.2.1) Core principle of flow concept
3.2.3) Value generation concept
3.3) Main ideas and techniques of new production philosophy
3.3.1) Just In Time (JIT)
3.3.2) Total Quality Control (TQC)
3.3.3) Other related concepts
3.4) Principles of new production philosophy
3.5) Flows in construction production
3.6) Challenges of implementing Lean Construction
31
31
32
32
34
35
36
37
40
40
41
42
45
57
59
4) Chapter 4: The Concepts of Waste and Modeling Construction Wastes
and Performances
4.1) Introduction
4.2) Construction waste in general
4.3) Waste and value loss in construction activities
4.3.1) Waste and value loss due to quality of works
4.3.2) Waste and value loss due to constructability
4.3.3) Waste and value loss due to material management
4.3.4) Waste and value loss due to non-productive time
4.3.5) Waste and value loss due to safety issues
4.4) New concept of waste in Production Activities
4.5) Underlying the waste concepts in construction
4.6) Waste classification
4.7) Key construction waste causes
4.8) Modeling waste and performance in construction
59
59
64
64
65
66
66
67
67
71
75
81
85
5) Chapter 5: Research Methodology
5.1) Introduction
5.2) Method of research
5.3) Profile of respondents
5.4) Structures of questionnaire
5.5) Score assignment
5.6) Analysis methods
90
90
95
96
97
98
v
pp.
6) Chapter 6: Data Analysis and Interpretation
6.1) Introduction
6.2) Descriptive analysis results
6.2.1) Respondents and their organisation’s background
6.2.1.1) Position of respondents
6.2.1.2) Nature of work of respondents
6.2.1.3) Main core construction projects involved by the
respondent’s organisation
6.2.1.4) CIDB registration grade of the respondent’s companies
6.2.1.5) Main project clients
6.2.2) Respondent’s waste perceptions and control actions
6.2.2.1) Analysis on direct conversion wastes
6.2.2.2) Analysis on non-contributory time wastes
6.2.2.3) Analysis on contributory time wastes
6.3) Inferential analysis results
6.3.1) Correlation among direct conversion wastes concepts and
perceptions, waste event control and frequencies of waste event
occurrences
6.3.2) Correlation among non-contributory time wastes concepts and
perceptions, waste event control and frequencies of waste event
occurrences
6.3.3) Correlation among contributory time wastes concepts and
perceptions, waste event control and frequencies of waste event
occurrences
6.3.4) Ranking on frequencies of occurrences for wastes exist in
construction processes
6.3.5) Ranking on likeliness for sources/ causes for the construction
wastes
6.4) Causes and Effects Matrix
103
103
105
106
107
107
108
109
110
110
117
124
131
131
133
135
137
139
141
7) Chapter 7: Conclusions and recommendations
7.1) Introduction
7.2) Discussion of the findings of the research
7.2.1) Relating the research findings to research objectives
7.2.2) Rewritten hypotheses and interpret the results
7.3) Limitations of the research
7.4) Challenges in implementing Lean Construction
145
145
145
149
153
154
Reference
xi
Appendices
xiv
vi
vi
LIST OF TABLES
pp.
Table 1.1:
Breakdown of scopes covered in each phase of the
research
9
Table 1.2:
Contents summary for the chapters covered in this thesis 12
Table 2.1:
Waste in construction: Compilation of existing data 16
Table 2.2:
Context of manufacturing and construction production 19
Table 5.1:
Waste elements in 3 separate waste group 93
Table 5.2:
Waste causes factors group 94
Table 6.1:
Construction waste recognition under direct conversion
waste category
111
Table 6.2:
Construction waste control practices under direct
conversion waste category
113
Table 6.3:
Matrix table between waste concepts and control
practices for direct conversion wastes
115
Table 6.4:
Construction waste recognition under non-contributory
time waste category
118
Table 6.5:
Construction waste control practices under non-
contributory time waste category
120
Table 6.6: Matrix table between waste concepts and control
practices for non-contributory time wastes
122
Table 6.7: Construction waste recognition under contributory time
waste category
125
Table 6.8:
Construction waste control practices under contributory
time waste category
127
Table 6.9: Matrix table between waste concepts and control
practices for contributory time wastes
129
vii
pp.
Table 6.10:
Correlation Pearson-r results summaries for hypothesis 1,
2 and 3
132
Table 6.11:
Correlation Pearson-r results summaries for hypothesis 4,
5 and 6
134
Table 6.12: Correlation Pearson-r results summaries for hypothesis 7,
8 and 9
136
Table 6.13: Construction waste variables ranking
137
Table 6.14: Sources/ causes of construction waste ranking
139
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
pp.
Figure 1.1:
Research methodology flow chart
8
Figure 3.1:
Hierarchical decomposition of production process with
transformation concept
33
Figure 3.2:
Production as a flow process 37
Figure 3.3:
The conceptual scheme of a supplier-customer pair 38
Figure 3.4:
Simplified diagrams categorizing the principles of lean
production for production improvement
56
Figure 3.5:
The preconditions for a construction task 58
Figure 4.1:
Performance improvement in conventional, quality and
new production philosophy approaches.
69
Figure 4.2:
Koskela’s flow process model. 72
Figure 4.3:
Serpell’s Modeling of the construction process 72
Figure 4.4:
Categories of wastes of productive time 80
Figure 6.1:
Composition of respondent’s position 105
Figure 6.2:
Percentage of categorisation of respondent’s nature of
work
106
Figure 6.3: Composition of the main core construction projects by
the respondent’s company
107
Figure 6.4:
CIDB registration of the respondent’s company 108
Figure 6.5: Percentages of main project clients of the respondent’s
company
109
Figure 6.6: Breakdown of direct conversion waste recognition cases
112
Figure 6.7:
Breakdown of direct conversion waste event control
cases
114
ix
pp.
Figure 6.8:
Breakdown of non-contributory time waste recognition
cases
119
Figure 6.9: Breakdown of non-contributory time waste control
practice cases
121
Figure 6.10: Breakdown of contributory time waste recognition cases
126
Figure 6.11: Breakdown of contributory time waste control practice
cases
128
Figure 6.12: Percentage breakdown of the wastes recognition by
nature of work of the respondents
130
Figure 6.13: Causes and Effects relationship for the cases of major causes
(Categorised)
142
Figure 6.14: Causes and Effects relationship for the cases of others causes
(Categorised)
143
x
LIST OF APPENDICES
pp.
Appendix 1:
Correlation Pearson r results from SPSS 10.0
xiv
Appendix 2:
One way t-test results from SPSS 10.0 xv
Appendix 3:
SPSS data inputs sheets xvi
Appendix 4:
Causes and Effects matrix tables xxii
Appendix 5:
Sample of questionnaires xxiv
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research background
Construction is a key sector of the national economy for countries all around the world,
as traditionally it took up a big portion in nation’s total employment and its significant
contribution to a nation’s revenue as a whole. However, until today, construction
industries are still facing numbers of contingent problems that were bounded to be
resolved since the past time. The chronic problems of construction are well known such
as Low productivity, poor safety, inferior working conditions, and insufficient quality.
(Koskela, 1993) and the phenomenon of the poor performance and conditions in
construction had long been witnessed and recorded by academics and practitioners
throughout the world regardless in developed countries e.g. England (Eaton, 1994) or
in developing countries e.g. Chile. (Serpell et al., 1995)
Nowadays, increasing foreign competition, the scarcity of skilled labour and the need to
improve construction quality are the key challenges faced by the construction industry.
Responding to those challenges imposes an urgent demand to raise productivity, quality
and to incorporate new technologies to the industry. A lack of responsiveness can hold
back growth, and to development of the needed infrastructure for the construction
industry and other key activities in the country. (Alarcón, 1994)
2
Pertaining to the challenges faced by the construction industry, numerous researches
and studies had been carried out for the past decades to identify the causes to the
construction problems and some of them had went on to suggest and recommend
solutions to rectify those identified problems. The early phase of these studies mainly
focused on the “end” side of the construction process with the introduction of new
technologies and equipment to speed up the construction process and improve overall
productivity. It was only until late 1980s where a new construction improvement
movement was being initiated by looking into the “mean” side of the construction
process-related problems in a more holistic and structured way based on the philosophy
and ideology of lean production. With the lean construction paradigm, construction
industry had started to be reviewed and evaluated in the possibilities of implementing
these new lean perspectives of production concepts in the construction processes to
optimise the overall construction performance on construction stage as well as design
stage. However, in construction, there has been rather little interest in this new
production philosophy. (Alarcón, 1994) This matter laid on whether or not the new
production philosophy has implications for construction and will give any significant
impacts on the productivity improvement.
According to the scholars and researchers in Lean Construction, the new construction
production philosophy is laid on the concepts of conversion and flow process.
Therefore, performance improvement opportunities in construction can then be
addressed by adopting waste identification/ reduction strategies in the flow processes in
3
parallel with value adding strategies with the introduction of new management tools and
with proper trainings and education programs. Unfortunately, these new lean
construction concepts especially those on wastes and values most of the times are not
well understood by construction personnel. Particularly, waste is generally associated
with waste of materials in the construction processes while non-value adding activities
such as inspection, delays, transportation of materials and others are not recognised as
waste. (Alarcón, 1995) As the result of that, the productivity of construction industry
cannot be fully optimised due to the narrow interpretation on the concept of waste
current adopted. In this case, substantial education programs need to be arranged for all
related parties involved in order to implement the new process improvement strategies
successfully throughout the construction process cycle.
1.2 Problem statement
It is presumably that construction industries in Malaysia are facing the same generic
(process-related) problems/ wastes on construction activities which was also faced by
their counterparts regardless those in developed countries or developing countries.
However, the main problem in Malaysia (might be the same for most of other countries)
is the lack of clear indicators on quantitative parameters to assess the extent of those
problems/ wastes to have been impacted on the overall performance and productivity of
local construction industries. To date, there have not been many well-documented
quantitative studies and records on to process-related problems/ wastes which arisen on
construction site in Malaysia. As a result of that, the introduction of the concepts and
4
framework of new lean construction ideology are seen as an opportunity to address the
existing problems in local construction industry and utilising concepts and framework
of new lean construction ideology can then go further to formulate the extent of impacts
of those problems/ wastes on a more structured and quantitative basis.
Prior to assess the severity of the process-related problems/ wastes which existed in the
construction processes for the local construction industries, the differentiate of
traditional and new production/ construction concepts will have to be drawn prior to
further investigation and evaluation on any project performances. New measurement
parameters such as waste, value, cycle time or variability that was not covered under
traditional concepts are to be introduced into this study as accordance to the lean
construction ideologies and the subjects in this case; the local construction personnel
will be subsequently examined with those new parameters to review the level of
understanding and practicability in local construction industry compare to the
requirements and the concepts set forth by lean construction philosophy.
1.3 Research aim
This research is intended to verify and reevaluated the status of existing productivity
and performances on construction activities and processes for local construction
industries. This is meant to have a clearer picture on how “lean” is local construction
industry performed currently under the compilation of new measurement parameters on
5
particularly on waste and cycle time pertaining to the concepts and principles of Lean
Construction.
In line with this, this research will intend to reveal the perception of the local
contractors by seeing waste recognition and reduction as strategies in improving
construction productivity. This will be an important factor to be evaluated as the key
factors of the success for the practice of lean construction improvement strategies
mostly based on the mind set and readiness of the practitioners mainly personnel with
the leading role in the cycle of the construction projects to drive the whole program.
1.4 Research objectives
The research seeks to confirm four (4) objectives, which are:
1. Examine the general perceptions of the local construction industry with the lean
construction principles of practices.
2. Determine the degree of problems arisen from wastes identified in existing
scenario and practices in local construction industry.
3. Identify the source of wastes (classified under lean construction) and related
them to the waste identified in local construction industry.
4. Study the potential project productivity improvements by reducing and
eliminating the wastes as classified under lean construction.
6
1.5 Research scopes
The scopes of the research are as follows:
1. The area of this study is confined to the Peninsular of Malaysia excluding East
Malaysia.
2. The primary data will be collected through questionnaires mainly through postal
and electronic mailing to selective group of respondents (mainly site personnel
who has a leading role in the construction management e.g. project managers,
general managers, resident engineers, site managers, site engineers and
supervisors, etc) for the construction and consultant firms in the confined area of
study.
3. The conducted sample surveys are not to be considered as a specific case in
depth but to capture the main characteristics of the population using a fixed
sample. Thus, there will be no limitation imposed to the qualification level and
working experience of the respondents.
4. The primary data collection is conducted from XX th November 2003 until
XXth February 2003. The returned completed questionnaires that received
during the designated period will be analysed and the responses beyond this time
frame will be ignored.
7
1.6 Research limitations
There are certain limitations to this research as the writer wish to highlight as follow:
1. Research Validity
The study approach for this research is based on structured surveys to be carried
out based on postal and electronic mailing questionnaires. Therefore, the feedback
from the respondents will provide as a sole dependable source of result in
supporting the research finding. Field data collections for all the local construction
projects will very much help in verifying the feedback from the structured surveys
but due to time constraints and the insignificant of field data collections to support
the research finding, field data collections is discarded from the research design
and it is recommended that in the future, further studies on the field to be carried
out as a collective efforts to justify the finding of this research.
2. Research Reliability
As mentioned early, the concepts of lean construction are relatively new in
Malaysia, thus there might be little attention given by the local construction
industry to the area of parameters or variables need to be measured and evaluated.
This might affects the consistency of the results in the data measurement where
the subjectivity of answering from the respondents is required.
8
1.7 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
FORMULATE PROBLEM
STATEMENT
RESEARCH
SCOPES
RESEARCH
OBJECTIVES
RESEARCH DESIGN
DATA COLLECTION &
PROCESSING
SECONDARY
DATA
PRIMARY
DATA
DATA ANALYSIS
CONCLUSION &
EVALUATION
First Stage
Second Stage
Third Stage
Fourth Stage
Fifth Stage
RESEARCH REPORT Sixth Stage
Figure 1.1
Research methodology flow chart
9
First Phase
q Formulation
Problem Statement
q In formulation of the problem statement for this
study, extensive preliminary literature studies are
required as the areas of study are relatively new in
Malaysia.
q The concepts of “Lean Construction” need to be
further explored and examined before forming the
research aims, objectives and scopes
q Sources of references will include journals,
technical reports, proceedings, publishing on the
Internet and books.
q The research aims, objectives and scopes will then
be established together with the discussion with
the supervisor in order to formulate the direction of
the research.
Second Phase
q Research Design
q A quantitative research approach will be adopted
for this study requiring the development and
dissemination of a questionnaire survey.
q A sample survey will be conducted through a
randomly selected subject group throughout
Peninsular Malaysia.
q Questionnaires are to be properly designed and
10
structured. The factors and variables to be outlined
and put into questions in a way that enable the
quantitative data collected later will then be able to
be tested according to pre-determined research
objectives.
Third Phase
q Data Collection &
Processing
q The methods of data collection to be adopted
includes:
a. Postal questionnaires
b. Email questionnaires
q The data collected will then be properly organised
prior to data analysis process
Fourth Phase
q Data Analysis
q Statistical analysis will be carried out on the data
collected via descriptive statistic and inference
statistic.
q The significant of the outlined factors and
variables to be analysis against the research
problem statement
q SPSS (Statistical tool) will be utilised to analysis
particular data to reach particular conclusion
11
Fifth Phase
q Conclusion &
Evaluation
q This phase will evaluate and conclude the results
from the data analysis and conclude by answering
the research objectives with the findings from the
data collected and analysed
q Attach with constructive recommendations for
further researches
Sixth Phase
q Research Report
q This will involved substantial submission of write
up, orgainising the data format and outline
q Constant discussion with the supervisor throughout
the write up processes, until the approval of draft,
Amendment draft and finally Final manuscript
Table 1.1
Breakdown of scopes covered in each phase of the research
1.8 Research significance
To the benefits of local construction practices, this research is set to be one of the
pioneer efforts of instill the lean construction philosophy and principles into the
practical application on local construction industry. Production weaknesses and
problems of the industry will be redefined and reassessed in order to reformat a new
strategy and plan for productivity improvement in the local construction practices.
12
Whereas academically, the compilation of this research was also intended to set up
some frameworks for quantitative measurement on the productivity performances and
wastes measurement for local construction industry and perhaps set ground for future
researches to refine or reengineer the construction processes and practices of the local
construction industry.
1.9 Thesis structure
CHAPTER BRIEF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This chapter covers the overall perspective for the research,
such as research background, problem statement, research
aims, objective, scope, methodology and limitation
The extensive literature review will be divided into three main chapter (chapter 2-4) as
follows:
CHAPTER 2
THE PROBLEMS IN
CONSTRUCTION AND
THE TRENDS IN
IMPROVEMENT
STRATEGIES
This chapter will focus on the following subjects:
q Examine the background of the problems existed in
current construction processes
q Study the trends of improvement strategies in
construction
q Study the emergency of new production philosophy
CHAPTER 3
THE CONCEPTS OF
PRODUCTION AND
THE PRINCIPLES
BEHIND NEW
PRODUCTION
PHILOSOPHY
This chapter will focus on the following subjects:
q Theory of production and comparison of various types of
production philosophy
q Review the core of the lean ideology and the significant
benefit of lean production practices
q Review the challenges of implementing lean production
philosophy into construction industry
13
CHAPTER 4
THE CONCEPTS OF
WASTE AND NEW
TOOLS OF MODELING
CONSTRUCTION
WASTES AND
PERFORMANCES
This chapter will focus on the following subjects:
q Study the definition, concept and classification of waste
based on lean construction
q Outline the wastes in construction practices
q Review some of the principles of construction process
improvement and models of waste as suggested by the
lean construction paradigm
CHAPTER 5
RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY
This chapter will focus on the questionnaire design e.g. the
formulation of the hypotheses and the ways those hypotheses
are to be tested with the factors and variables identified in
the questionnaire. A general overview on the statistical
concepts will be studied to ensure the data are analysed
accordingly and to generate the data outputs relevant to the
hypotheses formulated.
CHAPTER 6
DATA ANALYSIS AND
INTERPRETATION
This chapter processes, analyses and then interprets the result
collected from the field survey and to stand out the aims and
objectives for this research
CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSIONS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter concludes the whole study based on the
findings. The tested hypotheses will be related to the
research objectives and further interpreted and conclusion on
the achievement of the research objectives will be drawn.
Some recommendations will also be drawn from the findings
and the limitation during the research period will also be
highlighted
Table 1.2
Contents summary for the chapters covered in this thesis
14
1.10 Summary
This research is conducted based on the criterions discussed above to reevaluated the
status of existing productivity & performances and the perception of waste concepts for
Malaysia construction industries based on lean construction concept and principles. The
further explanation of each of the subsequent chapters as summarised in Table 1.2 is
presented in the following chapters.
15
CHAPTER 2
THE PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION AND THE TRENDS IN
IMPROVEMENT STRATEGIES
2.1 Introduction
Construction industries worldwide have become notorious for under-performance in
many aspects such as quality, safety, productivity and product delivery to planned
budgets, programmes and client satisfaction. According to Adrain (1987), the
construction industry in US has been rated among the worst industries in term of
productivity improvement for the period between 1970 to 1986. The rate of productivity
for US construction industry always performed lower than the annual total US
productivity between the period of 1970 to 1986 as reported by U.S. Department of
Commerce. Koskela (1993) also conducted a study to indicate the order of magnitude
of non value-adding activities (waste) on various partial studies carried out in Sweden
and US. From Koskela’s data compilation, it has shown that construction processes are
characterised by high content of non value-adding activities leading to low productivity
as shown in Table 2.1 below.
16
Waste Cost Country
Quality costs (non-conformance) 12% of total of project cost US
External quality cost (during facility use) 4% of total project costs Sweden
Lack of constructability 6-10% of total of project cost US
Poor materials management 10% &12% of total of project cost US
Excess consumption of materials on site 10% on average Sweden
Working time used for non-value adding
activities on site
Approx. 2/3 of total time US
Lack of safety 6% of total project cost. US
Table 2.1:
Waste in construction: Compilation of existing data (Koskela, 1992)
Previous studies in the UK, Scandinavian countries, and US also reflecting the same
scenario where the studies indicated up to 30% of construction is rework, only 40-60%
of potential labour efficiency, accidents can account for 3-6% of total costs, and at least
10% of materials are wasted (DETR, 1998). The cost of rework in Australian
construction projects has been reported as being up to 35% of total project costs and
contributes as much as 50% of a project's total overrun costs. In fact, rework is one of
the primary factors contributing to the Australian construction industry's poor
performance and productivity. (Love et al, 2003)
In general, a very high level of wastes/ non added value activities are assumed to exist
in construction and it is difficult to measure all waste in construction. Several partial
studies from various countries have confirmed that wastes in construction industry
represent a relatively large percentage of production cost. (Formosa, Carlos T et al,
2002). The existences of significant numbers of wastes in the construction have
depleted overall performance and productivity of the industry and certain serious
measures have to be taken to rectify the current situation.
17
2.2 Problems in construction
The chronic problems of construction are well known: low productivity, poor safety,
inferior working conditions, and insufficient quality. (Koskela, 1993) However, most of
the time, those critical problems of construction were left unattended because people of
the industry refrained to believe or accept that there is a solution to those problems.
According to Koskela (1992), the incapability to improve the productivity level of
construction projects is mainly perceived by people in the industry as due to its
peculiarities and special features: one-of-a-kind nature of projects, site production, and
temporary multi-organisation. Most people concluded that its fragmented nature, lack of
co-ordination and communication between parties, adversarial contractual relationships,
and lack of customer focus inhibit the industry's performance.
Unlike manufacturing activities where the production activities are fundamentally
governed and controlled under a rather routine process, construction activities are
subjected to relatively wide range of variables and wastes factors throughout its
information management and resource flow process as compared to manufacturing
activities. These variables and wastes generated in construction activities are mainly due
to its large fieldwork component, the provisional nature of some of its organisations,
and its intensive use of labour and non-stationary equipment and indeed, those
construction peculiarities and variables will restraint the efficiency of the construction
processes compared to those stationary & well-controlled manufacturing processes, but
all of those peculiarities and variables can be overcome with the application of new
18
flow design and improvements as well as new technologies adoption. (Alarcon, 1994)
Therefore, the organisation, planning, allocation and control of these resources,
processes and technologies are what finally determine the productivity that can be
achieved.
2.3 Manufacturing as source of references and innovations
Throughout the years, manufacturing has always been a reference point and a source of
innovations to construction. Several efforts had been made to transfer the successful
techniques and solutions from manufacturing process into construction in order to
relieve the problems in construction industry. Most of the early efforts involved new
technology and process adoption from manufacturing practices i.e. industrialisation,
prefabrication and modularisation (new process adoption) and computer integrated
construction and automated construction (new technology adoption). However, there
have been no signs of major improvements to construction has resulting from both
trends of process dissemination and solutions as quoted by Koskela (2000). The main
reasons behind the failure of achieving any major improvements from both trends are
mainly due to certain key features between manufacturing and construction.
A comparison with manufacturing shows the key features, which distinguishes
construction from manufacturing, is the extent of uncertainty evident throughout the
production phase as shown in Table 2.2
19
Start of manufacturing production Start of construction in the field What Highly defined Evolving as means refines ends
How Highly defined. Operations plan is in great
detail based on many trails.
Primary sequence of many tasks is
inflexible and the interdependencies are
documented and analyzed. Positions in
process determine required skills
Partly defined but details un-examined.
Extensive planning remains by hard logic
but may change. Interdependencies due to
conflicting measurements, shared
resources, and intermediate products only
partly understood. General craft skills to
be applied in a variety of positions
Assembly Objectives Produces one of a finite set of objects
where details of what and how are known
at the beginning of assembly
Make the only one. The details of what
and how are not completely known at the
beginning of assembly
Improvement Strategy Rapid learning during the first units
preparing for production line
Rapid learning during both planning and
early sub-assembly cycles
Table 2.2
Context of manufacturing and construction production
However, there was a new development trend based on a new production philosophy
derived from manufacturing was slowly caught the attentions of the academics and
practitioners in construction industry in late 1980’s. In the last three decades have seen
great improvements in performance in manufacturing. Lean industries now use less of
everything: Less on the manufacturing space, less on the human effort in factories, less
on the investment in tools and less on the product development time. In general,
significant improvements in all performance indicators have been observed
simultaneously in manufacturing industry. All these improvements have not been the
product of a radical or sharp change of technology but the result of the application of a
new production philosophy leading to “Lean Production”.
These new development trend stresses on the importance of basic theories and
principles related to production management and now, the same practices have been
progressively promoted as an ideal solution as improvement strategies for construction
industry especially in waste reduction and elimination strategies. Among the earliest
20
academics promoting the new production philosophy in construction industry included
Lauri Koskela and Luis F Alarcón. Koskela (1992) identified the overwhelming
dominance of conversion thinking in construction and argues for replacing conversion
model with a flow/ conversion model in order to reduce waste. Alarcon (1995) also
pointed out that performance improvement opportunities could be addressed by
adopting waste identification/ reduction strategies in parallel to value adding strategies.
In other words, identifying and measuring waste will served as an effective way to
assess the performance of any production systems because it will usually point out areas
of potential improvement and the main causes of inefficiency. Waste measures are more
effective to support process management, since they enable some operational costs to be
properly modeled and generate information that is usually meaningful for the
employees, creating conditions to implement decentralised control.
2.4 Emergency of new production philosophy in manufacturing
Traditional manufacturing production philosophy and practices from the earlier days of
industrialisation era never went beyond the concept of the overall production process to
be treated as a mean of transformation process only, and by ignoring the flow process
has limited the full potential of process improvement. In 1950’s, those traditional
manufacturing production system were set for a paradigm shift when Taiichi Ohno
(1912-1990), a former Toyota (a Japanese major car manufacturer) executive had set
out to develop a new production system called Toyota Production System. Ohno's
original ideas were based on the adoption of production strategies identified according
21
to the demand of the downstream production chain, part of a production plan that
ensured the planned pace was maintained throughout the production process.
The basic idea in the Toyota production system is the elimination of inventories and
other waste through small lot production, reduced set-up times, semiautonomous
machines, co-operation with suppliers, and other techniques and in other words, the idea
was to achieve a continuous production flow by adopting monitoring measures for each
process phase, aiming to reduce inventories. (Conte & Gransberg, 2001) The
production philosophy behind Toyota production system is called Just-In-Time
production (JIT) and throughout the years, it has remained among the core practices of
the new production philosophy. Big productivity gains from Just-In-Time production
(JIT) and later as lean production, had been reported from manufacturing since the end
of 1970’s (Koskela, 2000)
Simultaneously, quality issues were attended to by Japanese industry under the
guidance of American consultants like Deming, Juran and Feigenbaum. Quality
philosophy evolved from a statistical method of quality assurance to a wider approach,
including quality circles and other tools for company-wide development. These ideas
were developed and refined by industrial engineers in a long process of trial and error;
establishment of theoretical background and wider presentation of the approach was not
seen as necessary.
22
However, the ideas on new production philosophy was not widely spread around the
industry at the beginning stage, it only diffused to Europe and America starting in about
mid 1970, especially in the automobile industry. Since the end of 1970’s, a lot of new
approaches to production management have been introduced into manufacturing
industry i.e. JIT (Just-In-Time), TQM (Total Quality Management), Time Based
Competition, Value Based Management, and Concurrent Engineering. It turns out that
for all the production management mentioned above were having the same common
idea but only they were viewing it from more or less different angles.
In years, the general conception of the new production philosophy evolved through
three levels: it was viewed as a tool (e.g. kanban and quality circles), as a manufacturing
methodology (e.g. JIT and TQM) and as a general management philosophy (e.g. lean
production) (Koskela, 1993). This common idea shared by a conceptualisation of
production or operations in general; the different in view angle is determined by the
design and control principles emphasized by any particular approach. (Koskela, 1993)
For instance JIT stresses the elimination of wait times whereas TQM aims at the
elimination of errors and related rework but both apply under the same
conceptualisation of production and operation e.g. a flow of work, material or
information.
In the beginning of the 1990’s, the new production philosophy, which is known by
several different names (world class manufacturing, lean production, new production
system) is the emerging mainstream approach. It is practiced, at least partially, by major
23
manufacturing companies in America and Europe. The new approach has also diffused
to new fields, like customised production, services, administration, and product
development. In recent years, this new production philosophy has been disseminated
and diffused in other industries, and this includes the construction industry (Koskela
2000), in the meantime, the new production philosophy has been undergoing further
development, primarily in Japan.
The latest development on new production philosophy now is closely integrated with
the ideology of lean thinking aiming for a leaner production chain throughout every
stage of the processes. The term “lean” was first used by John Krafcik, who was a
master’s student at MIT in the mid-1980s and it refers to a general way of thinking and
specific practices that emphasize less of everything – fewer people, less time, lower cost
(Cusumano & Nobeoka, 1998). Womack and Jones, (1996) suggested that Lean
Thinking provides production processes a way of specify value, line up value-creating
actions in the best sequence, conduct these activities without interruption whenever
someone requests them, and perform them more and more effectively. Freeman (1999)
concurred that Lean Thinking is not just about cutting down wastes (wasted time,
wasted effort and wasted materials) but it is also about putting on value and it involves
focusing on the whole process; from the earliest design to final handover.
24
2.5 The concept of new production philosophy
The core of the new production philosophy is based on the conclusive understanding
that all production systems are constituted of 2 main activities: Conversions and Flows
(waiting, moving, and inspecting). In the new production paradigm, only conversion
activities add value to the final product whereas flow activities do not; value is
determined under the value stream of the customers with the satisfaction of their
requirements and cost paid on the final product. Therefore, the primary objectives for
process/ performance/ productivity improvement under the flagship of new production
philosophy should be targeted separately. That can be done through the improvement of
flow activities (through which the conversion activities are bound together) by primarily
focusing on reducing or eliminating them and on the other hand, conversion activities
should be focused on making them more efficient.
This has important implications for the design, control, and improvement of production
processes, because according to Koskela (1992), traditional production management
paradigm sees the whole process simply as a conversion of an input into an output that
can be divided into sub-processes, which are also conversion processes. All activities
have been treated as though they were value-adding conversions without separating
from the flow processes. This has led to complex, uncertain and confused flow
processes, expansion of non value-adding activities, and reduction of output value.
25
Based on the understanding of the production process can be consists of both
conversion and flow activities, a generic process improvement plan based on new
production philosophy can be derived from the study of Enton (1994) on lean
productivity of construction professions. The first step to implement process
improvement plan is by analysis and separation of conversions and flows activities. For
conversions activities identified, those activities should be channeled into the quality
cycles (Quality control, Quality assurance and Total Quality Management) to increase
efficiency of value added conversions. Whereas, for flow activities, the approach should
be consists of way of flows simplification (through Elimination, simplification and
automation) in order to reduce or eliminate non-value added flow activities.
2.6 The impacts of new production philosophy in construction
In recent years, application of new production philosophy in construction are getting
more and more popular especially in the developing countries i.e. US and Europe.
Koskela (1992) identifies the overwhelming dominance of conversion thinking in
construction and argues for replacing the conversion model with flow/conversion model
in order to reduce waste. This has inspired Gregory Howell, a civil engineer, and
Research Director Glen Ballard from Lean Construction Institute of Idaho began to
investigate the performance of project planning systems. They later espoused the
concept of "Lean Construction" by seeing a potential for applying the general principles
set by Lauri Koskela (a researcher with VT Building Technology in Espoo) into
construction. (Wright, 2000)
26
According to Lean Construction Institute, Lean Construction is a production
management-based approach to project delivery; a new way to design and build capital
facilities and it extends from the objectives of a lean production system; maximise value
and minimise waste and to specific techniques and applies them in a new project
delivery process. The application of lean production philosophy to construction – or
Lean Construction, as it has been called by a group of collaborating researchers since
1993 (Koskela, 2000). Since then, the enthusiasms over lean construction paradigm are
intensified and widely accepted practitioners and academics around the world under the
belief that the implementation of Lean Construction will dramatically improve
construction performance and labour productivity.
Nowadays in UK and US, Lean Construction philosophy and principles are gradually
being introduced into universities’ mostly at post-graduate level. A lot of researches and
case studies have already been carried out using lean construction theories and
principles to formulate models and frameworks by the mean to evaluate the
performance and productivity in various aspects of the construction industry. Flow
improvement concepts and waste reduction/ elimination still remained major focus
among those researches in which they are viewed as value enhancement to the whole
construction production processes.
The development in UK’s construction industry eventually went onto an even higher
level of implementation with the establishment a nationwide movement of “Rethinking
27
Construction”. The origins of Rethinking Construction lie in a landmark report
published in 1998 led by Sir John Egan. As a report, it set clear targets for
improvements in the construction industry in UK, supported the principles of Best
Value and built upon the work of the 1994 Latham report. It has now matured and is
becoming a positive force that will bring major change within the construction industry
in UK.
The essences of Egan Report are nominally based on Lean Construction principles with
the setting a number of year-on-year targets on the basis of promoting a continuous
improvement in productive processes through a reduction of “waste” (time, cost, rework
and accidents) and an increase in “value” (quality, improvements, finish products, etc)
as shown below:
1. Reduce costs – capital by 10%
2. Reduce time – construction by 10%
3. Improve predictability – time and cost by 20%
4. Reduce defects – at handover by 20%
5. Increase productivity – by 10%
6. Increase profit and turnover – by 10%
7. Reduce accidents – by 20%
28
One of the example that Egan report impacts on construction industry in UK was a
major shift to long-term partnering deals between architects and housing associations in
UK following Department of the Environment, Transport & the Regions edict that
social housing must be 100% Egan-compliant within four years periods. In the Housing
Corporation's guide to allocation, a timetable sets out that the proportion of
Corporation-funded building procured on Egan principles must be 10% in 2000/2001,
rising to 30% in 2001/2002, 60% in 2002/2003, and reaching 100% in 2003/2004. That
policy had forced the UK’s developing associations to a fast-track conversion of their
procurement policies.
This radical shift in social housing procurement would have fundamentally altered the
relationship between housing associations and architects in UK. Developing
associations now have the Egan targets: 10% annual reduction in the cost and time of
construction, a 20% increase in predictability, 20% reduction in defects and other
standards for improvement. In this way, many UK’s housing associations will have to
look for consultants who understand the design/build/project management process to
achieve it for them.
2.7 The impact of new production philosophy in Malaysia construction industry
There have not been any significant signs of positive impacts of the new production
philosophy in Malaysia construction industry either in national level or domestic level.
The problems in Malaysia construction industry are still at a very serious level. For
29
example in construction safety, Abdul Rashid Abdul Aziz and Abdul Aziz Hussin
(2003) has quoted on a recent construction safety study carried out in 2001. In their
paper quoted that “the awareness of safety procedures and laws to be low among site
operatives; both site operatives and main contractors exhibit apathy for safety; and
safety enforcement is weak”. These phenomena of construction safety in Malaysia are
also backed by the statistics on construction accidents rate published by from DOSH,
which is also referred in their paper. This is only one dimension of problems in
Malaysia construction industry and besides that, there was always news about delay on
construction projects and low quality of project execution and delivery regardless
private or public projects.
Academically, lean construction are not being considered as a main source of research
direction in Malaysia, which is very much unlike countries like United Kingdom and
United States where they have post-graduate studies specially focus on the research of
lean construction. Literally, there were too few literature studies available under this
research topic locally although some partial studies on material wastes only but not
looking into the aspects of the construction process as a whole.
Institutionally, we have yet to witness any radical movements being planned towards
achieving leaner and more efficient construction industries as a whole as such as what
had been drafted in United Kingdom. This idea requires a throughout commitment and
understanding over the entire construction industries in order to achieve those goals and
the improvement over performance will be very significant.
30
Overall, the impacts of new production philosophy to local construction industries are
still considered minimal and so in reverse the potential of improvement in this field is
vast. Therefore, local construction industries need to be more aware of the new
concepts, principles, tools and instruments behind this new lean construction
philosophy. This is important efficient in order to make the local construction practices
leaner, more effective and able to sustain their competitiveness edges over other
compatriots in the industries inside or outside Malaysia.
31
CHAPTER 3
THE CONCEPTS OF PRODUCTION AND THE PRINCIPLES BEHIND NEW
PRODUCTION PHILOSOPHY
3.1 Introduction
When we start to discuss about new production philosophy, lean production or even
lean construction and their impacts on the production system, apparently, this would
signify that the existing conventional production philosophy or concepts inherited
numbers of deficiencies or problems which need to be rectified or overcome.
In this chapter, new production philosophy or lean production is to be examined in
detail on various perspectives starting on the conceptual of production into the
derivation of main and related ideas and techniques in new production philosophy,
compressing the principles behind the new production philosophy and finally the
practical implementation of new production philosophy in actual construction practices.
3.2 The concept of production
A historical analysis carried out by Koskela (2000) has revealed that there are three
concepts of production where the conceptualisation of production can be grouped based
32
on the generation of transformation-flow-value model of production theory or simply as
TFV model.
3.2.1. Transformation concept
Since the beginning of the 20th
century, transformation concept has been the
dominant theory of production, both in practice and research where production
is conceptualised as a process of transformation or “a transformation of inputs
to outputs”. Production management equates to decomposing the total
transformation into elementary transformations and tasks, acquiring the inputs to
these tasks with minimal cost and carrying out the tasks as efficiently as
possible.
3.2.1.1 Core principle of transformation concept
The first core principle which has been used in conjunction with transformation
concept stated that: The transformation process can be decomposed into sub-
processes, which also are transformation process as reflected in Figure 3.1, of
breaking up the total transformation (production process) into much smaller and
more manageable transformations and eventually can be further breakdown into
individual continual tasks.
33
Figure 3.1
Hierarchical decomposition of production process with transformation concept
The second core principle of the transformation model is a general acceptance of
independency principle that the cost of the total process can be minimised
through minimising the cost of each sub-process. The key issue pertaining to
this principle leads to the assumption that every sub-processes of a total process
are independent from each other and therefore cost minimisation can be applied
through focus on cost management in each operation, sub-process or
department.
The third core principle formulated currently recommended that It is
advantageous to insulate the production process from the external environment
through physical or organisational buffering. This principle is related to the
independence assumption from the second core principle as discussed above and
Production
Process
Subprocess
A
Subprocess
B
Material,
Labours Products
Source: Koskela, Lauri (2000). An Exploration towards a production theory and its application to construction
34
it reflects that the transformation process that is most important, and it is thus a
requisite to shield it from the erratic conditions in the environment.
3.2.1.2 Critiques on transformation concept
Transformation concept is conventionally wide-accepted in term of production
theory and practical was mainly due to its sufficient power to model reality, and
excellent power of various tools derived from it to analysis and control production
in an easy and simple way. However, its oversimplification in theory formulation by
considering all processes are transformation activities tends to undermine the full
optimum of efficiency and productivity for the production process. Below are some
of the critiques as cited by Koskela (2000):
1. By focusing on conversions, the model abstracts away physical flows between
conversions. These flows consist of moving, waiting and inspecting activities. In
a way, this is a correct idealisation; from the customer point of view these
activities are not needed since they do not add value to the end product.
However, in practice, the model has been interpreted so that
a) These non value-adding activities can be left out of consideration or
b) All activities are conversion activities, and are therefore treated as value-
adding.
35
2. The output of each conversion is usually variable, to such an extent that a share
of the output does not fulfill the implicit or explicit specification for that
conversion and has to be scrapped or reworked
3. The specification for each conversion is imperfect; it only partially reflects the
true requirements of the subsequent conversions and the final customer.
3.2.2. Flow Concept
The flow view of production, firstly proposed by the Gilbreths (1922) in
scientific terms, has provided the basis for JIT and lean production. This view
was firstly translated into practice by Ford (1926); however, the template
provided by Ford was in this regard misunderstood, and only from 1940’s
onwards the flow view of production was properly developed in Japan, first as
part of war production and then at Toyota. As a result, the flow view is
embodied in JIT and lean production and the triumph of the JIT and lean
production has practically proven the power of this conception.
The new production concept of flow was emerged apparently from the
erroneous view of decomposition in the transformation model of production that
is the intervals between transformations, which happen to be non-
transformations activities. In flow concept, production is viewed as a flow,
where, in addition to transformation, there are waiting, inspection and moving
stages. Production management equates to minimising the share of non-
36
transformation stages of the production flow, especially by reducing variability.
In this context, flow model is looking beyond transformation model by taking
non-transformations activities into consideration as to improve overall flow
efficiency.
3.2.2.1 Core principle of flow concept
The first core principle of this flow concept is the introduction of time as an
input (or resource) in production and therefore the main focus is in the amount
of time consumed by the total transformation and its parts by aiming for the
production improvement at shortening of the total time of production. With the
introduction of time also implies that production has to be conceived as a
physical process and not only as an economic abstraction in cost terms.
The second core principle of the flow concept is that time is consumed by two
types of activities in the overall production flow which are transformation
activities and non-transformation activities. Gilbert (1922) categorised the non-
transformation activities as transfer, delay and inspection as showed in Figure
3.2 and it is obvious that these non-transformation activities are unnecessary and
the less of them is better and best if there are none of them.
37
Figure 3.2
Production as a flow process
There are 3 main principles in production system design, control and
improvement utilising flow concepts as shown below and they are seen to be
centering over a common basic goal, which is eliminate waste from flow
process.
1. The first principle is to reduce the share of non-value-adding activities
(waste),
2. The second principle is to reduce lead time and variability
3. The third principle provides practical ways in implementation such as
simplify by minimising the number of steps, parts and linkages, increase
flexibility and increase transparency.
3.2.3 Value Generation Concept
The value generation view was initiated by Shewhart (1931) and further refined
in the framework of the quality movement but also in other circles. The value
Moving Waiting Processing A Inspection Moving Waiting Processing B Inspection
Scrap Scrap
Source: Koskela, Lauri (2000). An Exploration towards a production theory and its application to construction
38
generation concept are formulated not a same as transformation and flow
concept by incorporating customer as the ultimate value determinate to the
production and argued that the goal of production is to satisfy customer needs.
In this case, value generation concept covers external needs and to ensure the
internal physical process can generate appropriate values to the customer/ end-
user. Figure 3.3 will illustrate the conceptual scheme of a supplier-customer
pair and introduces the customer and product with its features. It is clear from
the framework that it is not the transformation itself that is valuable, but the fact
that the output corresponds to the requirements, wishes, etc of the customer
which is valuable instead.
Figure 3.3 The conceptual scheme of a supplier-customer pair
This third concept of value generation concept views production as a means for
the fulfillment of customer needs. Production management equates to translating
these needs accurately into a design solution, and then producing products that
conform to the specified design. It focus on control of the transformation and
flow, namely control for the sake of the customer and it is important to highlight
Supplier Customer
Requirements,
expectations
Value through
products and
services
Source: Koskela, Lauri (2000). An Exploration towards a production theory and its application to construction
39
that the value generation concept does not focus on any particular aspect of
physical production like transformation and flow model do but rather on its
control in securing value generated for the customer.
In this circumstances, conventional production philosophy would referred to production
system is merely based on transformation concepts while new production philosophy
would engulf both flow concepts and value generation concepts in the development of
production system. The most significant differences between conventional and the new
production philosophy can be discussed in two areas: conceptualisation of production
and focus of improvement. For conventional production philosophy, production is
perceived as consists of conversions only with all the activities in the processes are
regarded as value adding, and the focus of process improvement only will happen by
implementing new technology into the activities.
Whereas for new production philosophy, production is perceived as consists of
conversions and flows where activities in the processes can be divided into value adding
and non-value adding activities, therefore the focus of process improvement can be
broken down into 2 separated areas which are the elimination or reduction for non-value
adding activities and the increase of process efficiency for value adding activities
through continuous improvement and new technology.
40
3.3 Main ideas and techniques of new production philosophy
Several factors make it difficult to present a coherent overview of the ideas and
techniques of the new production philosophy. This is because this field is still relative
young and in constant evolution where new concepts emerge and the content of old
concepts change. The same concept is used to refer to a phenomenon on several levels
of abstraction. It is not clear where to place the boundaries between related concepts.
However, the overview over two historically important “root” terms, Just In Time (JIT)
and Total Quality Control (TQC) can help to enhance the understanding of the basic
concepts for new production philosophy, while other related newer concepts, which are
primarily outgrowths of JIT and TQC. These outgrowths show that the field of
application of the original ideas has extended far beyond the production sphere.
3.3.1 Just In Time (JIT)
The starting point of the new production philosophy was in industrial engineering
oriented developments initiated by Ohno and Shingo at Toyota car factories in the
1950’s. The driving idea in the approach was reduction or elimination of inventories
(work in progress). This, in turn, led to other techniques that were forced responses to
coping with fewer inventories: lot size reduction, layout reconfiguration, supplier co-
operation, and set-up time reduction. The pull type production control method, where
production is initiated by actual demand rather than by plans based on forecasts, was
introduced.
41
The concept of waste is one cornerstone of JIT. The following 7 wastes were recognised
by Shingo as (1) Overproduction, (2) Waiting, (3) Transporting, (4) Too much
machining (overprocessing), (5) Inventories, (6) Moving, (7) Making defective parts
and products. Elimination of waste through continuous improvement of operations,
equipment and processes is another cornerstone of JIT.
3.3.2 Total Quality Control (TQC)
The starting point of the quality movement was the inspection of raw materials and
products using statistical methods. The quality movement in Japan has evolved from
mere inspection of products to total quality control. The term total refers to three
extensions:
1. Expanding quality control from production to all departments,
2. Expanding quality control from workers to management, and
3. Expanding the notion of quality to cover all operations in the company.
The quality methodologies have developed in correspondence with the evolution of the
concept of quality. The focus has changed from an inspection orientation (sampling
theory), through process control (statistical process control and the old seven tools -
Fishbone Diagram, Control Chart, Pareto Chart, Run Graphs, Histogram, Flow charts or Check sheets &
Correlation Diagram), to continuous process improvement (the new seven tools - Affinity
Diagram, Interrelationship Diagraph, Tree Diagram, Matrix Diagram, Prioritisation Grid, Process
42
Decision Programme Chart & Activity Network Diagram), and presently to designing quality into
the product and process (Quality Function Deployment).
3.3.3 Other related concepts
Many new concepts have surfaced from JIT and TQC efforts. These have been rapidly
elaborated and extended, starting a life of their own. Several of these concepts are
described below.
1. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)
Total Productive Maintenance is a comprehensive program to maximise
equipment availability in which production operators are trained to perform
routine maintenance tasks on a regular basis, while technicians and engineers
handle more specialised tasks. The scope of TPM programs includes
maintenance prevention (through design or selection of easy-to-service
equipment), equipment improvements, preventive maintenance, and predictive
maintenance (determining when to replace components before they fail).
TPM tackles the "six big losses" and is closely tied to the practices of 5S, the six
big losses are:
1. Breakdown losses
2. Setup & Adjustment losses
3. Idling & minor stoppages
43
4. Reduced speed losses
5. Start up losses
6. Quality defects
2. Concurrent engineering
Concurrent engineering is a cross-functional, team-based approach in which the
product and the production process are designed and configured within the same
time frame, rather than sequentially. Ease and cost of constructability, as well as
customer needs, quality issues, and product life cycle costs are taken into
account earlier in the development cycle.
The main ideas about concurrent engineering is to achieve an improved design
process characterized by rigorous up-front requirements analysis, incorporating
the constraints of subsequent phases into the conceptual phase, and tightening of
change control towards the end of the design process.
3. Continuous improvement
Continuous improvement is a never-ending effort to expose and eliminate root
causes of problems; small-step improvement as opposed to big-step or radical
improvement. A Continuous Improvement strategy involves everyone from the
44
very bottom to the very top, the basic premise being that small regular
improvements leads to a significant positive improvement over time.
The main goal of the continuous improvements is to affect the mindset as well
as achieve the improvements of the techniques. In this case, everyone pitches in
and receives training in the appropriate skills; responsible for their own efforts,
areas and progress of their teams and the employees will continuously suggest
improvements to meet quality, cost and delivery target improvements. The key
idea of continuous improvement is to maintain and improve the working
standards through small, gradual improvements.
4. Visual management
Visual management is an orientation towards visual control in production,
quality and workplace organisation. The core principal of visual management is
the ability to understand that, with a quick look at the shop floor what orders are
being done, if production is ahead, on par or behind and what needs to be done
next. No orders are missed or lost and every one knows if they are behind or
ahead on the day’s production. Shop floor staff will take on more self-managing
responsibility with this method as day-to-day decisions are handled on the shop
floor.
45
Generally this method is implemented on large boards next to particular areas on
the shop floor, and as much information is shared as is feasible, ranging from
maintenance to production targets and production output to injuries.
5. Re-engineering
Re-engineering is the radical reconfiguration of processes and tasks, especially
with respect to implementation of information technology. The key issue in re-
engineering is in recognising and breaking away from outdated rules and
fundamental assumptions in order to establish a radical change to the processes
and tasks for improvement.
6. Value based strategy (or management)
Value based strategy (or management) is a customer-oriented, in contrast to
competitor-oriented approach toward overall production process. It is a
continuous improvement to increase customer by conceptualizing and
articulating value as the basis for competing.
3.4 Principles of new production philosophy
In various subfields of the new production philosophy, a number of heuristic principles
for flow process design, control and improvement have evolved. According to Koskela
46
(1993), there was ample evidence that through these principles, the efficiency of flow
processes in production activities can be considerably and rapidly improved.
Many of those principles are closely related, but not on the same abstraction level.
Some are more fundamental, while others more application oriented. It is also important
to note that the understanding of these principles is of very recent origin. It is presumed
that knowledge of these principles will rapidly grow and be systematised. The
principles of new production were further breakdown as follows (Koskela, 1992)
1. Reduce the share of non value-adding activities
Reducing the share of non value-adding activities is regarded as the most fundamental
principle of new production philosophy or lean production where it is the center of idea
for new production philosophy, which differentiates it from conventional production
thinking.
There are 3 main sources of non value-adding activities:
1. Non value-adding activities exist by design in hierarchical organisations. Every
time a task is divided into two subtasks executed by different specialists, non
value-adding activities increase: inspecting, moving and waiting. In this way,
traditional organisational design contributes to an expansion of non value-
adding activities.
47
2. Ignorance is another source of non value-adding activities. Especially in the
administrative sphere of production, many processes have not been designed in
an orderly fashion, but instead just evolved in an ad hoc fashion to their present
form. The volume of non value-adding activities is not measured, so there is no
drive to curb them.
3. Non value-adding activities exist also due to the nature of the production: work-
in-process has to be moved from one conversion to the next, defects emerge,
accidents happen.
With respect to all three causes for non value-adding activities, it is possible to
eliminate or reduce the amount of these activities. However, this principle cannot be
used simplistically. This is because some of the non value-adding activities produce
value for internal customers, like planning, accounting and accident prevention. Such
activities should not be suppressed without considering whether more non value-adding
activities would result in other parts of the process. However, accidents and defects, for
example, have no value to anybody and should be eliminated without any hesitation.
Most of the principles presented below address suppression of non value-adding
activities. However, it is possible to directly attack the most visible waste just by
flowcharting the process, then pinpointing and measuring non value-adding activities.
2. Increase output value through systematic consideration of customer
requirements
48
This is another fundamental principle. Value is generated through fulfilling customer
requirements, not as an inherent merit of conversion. The organisational and control
principles of the conventional production philosophy have tended to diminish the role of
customer requirements. In many processes, customers have never been identified nor
their requirements clarified. The dominant control principle has been to minimise costs
in each stage; this has not allowed for optimisation of cross-functional flows in the
organisation.
The practical approach to this principle is to carry out a systematic flow design, where
customers are defined for each stage, and their requirements analysed. Other principles,
especially enhanced transparency and continuous improvement, also contribute to this
principle.
3. Reduce variability
Production processes are variable. There are differences in any two items, even though
they are the same product, and the resources needed to produce them (time, raw
material, labor) vary from time to time. From the customer point of view a uniform
product is better. Thus, reduction of variability should go beyond mere conformance to
given specifications and reduction of variability within processes must be considered an
intrinsic goal.
49
The practical approach to decreasing variability is made up of the well-known
procedures of statistical control theory. Essentially, they deal with measuring
variability, then finding and eliminating its root causes. Standardisation of activities by
implementing standard procedures is often the means to reduce variability in both
conversion and flow processes. Another method is to install fool-proofing devices
(“poka-yoke”) into the process as been introduced by Shingo in Toyota Production
System.
4. Reduce the cycle time
Time is a natural metric for flow processes and it can be used to drive improvements in
both cost and quality. A production flow can be characterised by the cycle time, which
refers to the time required for a particular piece of material to traverse the flow.
The basic improvement rationale in the new production philosophy is to compress the
cycle time, which forces the reduction of inspection, move and wait time. In addition to
the forced elimination of wastes, compression of the total cycle time also provides faster
delivery to the customer, reduced need to make forecasts about future demand, decrease
of disruption of the production process due to change orders and establish easier
management because there are fewer customer orders to keep track of.
Practical approaches to cycle time reduction include the following:
50
1. Eliminating work-in-progress (this original JIT goal reduces the waiting time
and thus the cycle time)
2. Reducing batch sizes
3. Changing plant layout so that moving distances are minimised
4. Keeping things moving; smoothing and synchronising the flows
5. Reducing variability
6. Changing activities from sequential order to parallel order
7. Isolating the main value-adding sequence from support work
8. Decrease organisational layers and empowering the persons working directly
within the flow
In general, solving the control problems and constraints preventing a speedy flow.
5. Simplify by minimising the number of steps and parts
One fundamental problem of complexity is extra cost incurred. If other things are being
equal, the very complexity of a product or process increases the costs beyond the sum of
the costs of individual parts or steps. Another fundamental problem of complexity is
reliability: complex systems are inherently less reliable than simple systems.
Furthermore, the human ability to deal with complexity is bounded and easily exceeded.
Simplification can be understood as
1. Reducing of the number of components in a product
51
2. Reducing of the number of steps in a material or information flow
Simplification can be realised, on the one hand, by eliminating non value-adding
activities from the production process, and on the other hand by reconfiguring value-
adding parts or steps. Organisational changes can also bring about simplification.
Vertical and horizontal division of labor always brings about non value-adding
activities, which can be eliminated through self-contained units (multi-skilled,
autonomous teams).
Practical approaches to simplification include:
1. Shortening the flows by consolidating activities
2. Reducing the part count of products through design changes or prefabricated
parts
3. Standardising parts, materials, tools, etc.
4. Decoupling linkages
5. Minimising the amount of control information needed.
6. Increase output flexibility
At first glance, increase of output flexibility seems to be contradictory to simplification.
However, according to some studies, many companies have succeeded in realising both
goals simultaneously. Some of the key elements are modularised product design in
connection with an aggressive use of the other principles, especially cycle time
compression and transparency.
52
Practical approaches to increased flexibility include:
1. Minimising lot sizes to closely match demand
2. Reducing the difficulty of setups and changeovers
3. Customising as late in the process as possible
4. Training a multi-skilled workforce.
7. Increase process transparency
Lack of process transparency increases the propensity to err, reduces the visibility of
errors, and diminishes motivation for improvement. Thus, it is an objective to make the
production process transparent and observable for facilitation of control and
improvement. The goal to achieve process transparency is to substitute self-control for
formal control and related information gathering and this can be achieved by making
the process directly observable through organisational or physical means,
measurements, and public display of information.
Practical approaches for enhanced transparency include the following:
1. Establishing basic housekeeping to eliminate clutter: the method of 5-S (Sort, Set,
Shine, Standardise, Sustain)
2. Making the process directly observable through appropriate layout and signage
3. Rendering invisible attributes of the process visible through measurements
53
4. Embodying process information in work areas, tools, containers, materials and
information systems
5. Utilising visual controls to enable any person to immediately recognise
standards and deviations from them
6. Reducing the interdependence of production units (focused factories).
8. Focus control on the complete process
There are two causes of segmented flow control: the flow traverses different units in a
hierarchical organisation or crosses through an organisational border. In both cases,
there is a risk of suboptimisation.
There are at least two prerequisites for focusing control on complete processes. First,
the complete process has to be measured and secondly, there must a controlling
authority for the complete process. Several alternatives are currently used. In
hierarchical organisations, process owners for cross-functional processes are appointed,
with responsibility for the efficiency and effectiveness of that process. A more radical
solution is to let self-directed teams control their processes. For inter-organizational
flows, long-term co-operation with suppliers and team building have been introduced
with the goal of deriving mutual benefits from an optimised total flow.
54
9. Build continuous improvement into the process
The effort to reduce waste and to increase value is an internal, incremental, and iterative
activity that can and must be carried out continuously. There are several necessary
methods for institutionalising continuous improvement:
1. Measuring and monitoring improvement.
2. Setting stretch targets (e.g. for inventory elimination or cycle time reduction), by
means of which problems are unearthed and their solutions are stimulated
3. Giving responsibility for improvement to all employees; a steady improvement
from every organisational unit should be required and rewarded.
4. Using standard procedures as hypotheses of best practice, to be constantly
challenged by better ways.
5. Linking improvement to control: improvement should be aimed at the current
control constraints and problems of the process. The goal is to eliminate the root
of problems rather than to cope with their effects.
10. Balance flow improvement with conversion improvement
In a situation where flows have been neglected for decades, the potential for flow
improvement is usually higher than conversion improvement. On the other hand, flow
improvement can be started with smaller investments, but usually requires a longer time
than a conversion improvement.
55
The crucial issue is that flow improvement and conversion improvement are intimately
interconnected as better flows require less conversion capacity and thus less equipment
investment and vice verse more controlled flows make implementation of new
conversion technology easier. However, it is often worthwhile to aggressively pursue
flow process improvement before major investments in new conversion technology.
Later, technology investments may be aimed at flow improvement or redesign.
11. Benchmark
Unlike technology for conversions, the best flow processes are not marketed to us; we
have to find the world class processes ourselves. Often benchmarking is a useful
stimulus to achieve breakthrough improvement through radical reconfiguration of
processes and by means of it, fundamental logical flaws in the processes may be
unearthed.
The basic steps of benchmarking include the following:
1. Knowing the process; assessing the strengths and weaknesses of subprocesses
2. Knowing the industry leaders or competitors; finding, understanding and
comparing the best practices
3. Incorporating the best; copying, modifying or incorporating the best practices in
your own subprocesses
4. Gaining superiority by combining existing strengths and the best external
practices.
56
In summary, we can see that these principles of new production philosophy or more
precisely lean philosophy are mainly revolving around improvement over flows of the
processes. There is not much concern about the transformation or conversion concepts
while the concepts of value are rather integrated into enhancing value to flows activities
and not so much on the value of the products itself. The dimensions of the principles
can be further grouped into three ideas for flows improvement that are flow
compression, flow dynamic and flexibility and flow stability and control. Figure 3.4
simplified the principles of lean production for production improvement
Figure 3.4
Simplified diagrams categorizing the principles of lean production for production improvement
Flow Compression
q Reduce share of non
value-adding
activities
q Reduce variability q Reduce the cycle
time
q Simplify by
minimising the
number of steps and
parts
Flow Dynamic & Flexibility
q Increase output
value
q Increase output
flexibility
q Increase process
transparency
q Benchmarking
Flow Stability & Control
q Focus control on the
complete process
q Build continuous
improvement into
the process
q Balance flow
improvement with
conversion
improvement
Principles of lean production for production improvement
57
3.5 Flows in construction production
The production in construction is of assembly-type, where different material flows are
connected to the end product. In construction, there are 3 types of flows as suggested by
Koskela (2000): material flow (the transportation of components to the site for
particular installation), location flow (e.g. one particular trade goes through the different
part of the building or construction site to get their work done) and assembly flow (e.g.
the sequential of works of assembly and installation).
There are at least seven resource flows (or preconditions) that unite to generate the
construction task as illustrated In Figure 3.5 below. Many of these resource flows are of
relatively high variability, and thus the probability of a missing input is considerable.
For example, it is not uncommon that detailed drawings are still lacking at the intended
start of the work. Latent errors in drawings will emerge as problems during construction
on site. External conditions also form one specific source of variability. The
productivity of manual labour is inherently variable, and the availability of space and
connecting works is dependent on the progress of tasks of previous trades, thus bound
to be variable. Thus, in comparison to the typical manufacturing. Construction
productions are subjected to more sources of variability and the insight gained is that
construction consists of assembly tasks involving a high number of input flows.
Planning and controlling production becomes very important and tasks and flows have
to be considered in parallel in production management because: “realization of tasks
58
heavily depends on flows, and progress of flows in turn is dependent on realization of
task” (Koskela, 2000)
Figure 3.5 The preconditions for a construction task (Koskela, 2000)
In construction actually it is the installation team that moves from location to location.
This leads to another important feature of construction. In factory production, one part
can physically be only at one workstation at any one time. However, in construction,
several work units or trades can work on one part (e.g. a room) simultaneously at the
same time with lessened productivity due to interference and congestion of space of
operation. Thus, this phenomenon of congestion has a more dramatic influence on
construction productivity especially at workstation congestion and not so much of part
congestion, which is common in manufacturing.
Construction design
Components and materials
Workers
Equipment
Task
External conditions
Space
Connecting works
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CHAPTER 4
THE CONCEPTS OF WASTE AND MODELING CONSTRUCTION WASTES
AND PERFORMANCES
4.1 Introduction
In general, in lean production and lean construction paradigm sees that all those
activities that produce cost, direct or indirect, but do not add value or progress to the
product can be called waste. Waste is measured in terms of costs, including opportunity
costs. Other types of waste are related to the efficiency of the processes, equipment or
personnel and are more difficult to measure because the optimal efficiency is not always
known.
In this chapter, we will look into the definition, concept and classification of waste
based on new production philosophy and lean construction and outline the different
researches on wastes in construction practices and review some of the principles of
construction process improvement and some models of wastes and performance in
construction as suggested by the lean construction paradigm.
4.2 Construction waste in general
Waste in the construction industry has been the subject of several research projects
around the world in recent years. However, Most studies tend to focus on the waste of
materials, which is only one of the resources involved in the construction process. This
60
seems to be related to the fact that most studies are based on the conversion model, in
which material losses are considered to be synonymous of waste. Formosa, et al (2002)
stated that many people in the industry have considered waste are directly associated
with the debris removed from the site and disposed of in landfills and they suggested
that the main reason for this relatively narrow view of waste is perhaps the fact that it is
relatively easy to see and measure. The main focus for those conventional material
waste studies in construction are seen to be restricted to physical waste or material
waste in construction and/ or the specific impacts due to the physical waste itself.
Formoso, et al. (1999) in their earlier research paper entitled “Method for Waste
Control in Building Industry” had significantly grouped some researches and studies
done by other researchers around the world on the wastes in construction into 2 main
aspects based on the impacts of the construction waste:
1. Researches and studies mostly focused on the impacts on environmental
damage that result from the generation of material waste. For example:
a) The research on construction waste conducted by The Hong Kong
Polytechnic and the Hong Kong Construction Association Ltd. In year 1993
aimed to reduce the generation of waste at source, and to proposed
alternative methods for treatment of construction waste in order to reduce
the demand for final disposal areas.
b) The research project conducted by Brossik and Brouwers in The Netherlands
year 1996, concerned with the measurement and prevention of construction
61
waste, regarding sustainability requirements stated by Dutch environmental
policies.
2. Researches and studies mostly concerned with the economic impacts of waste in
the construction industry. For example:
a) The most extensive studies on this theme was carried out by Skoyles in UK
year 1976 whereby he actually monitored material wastes in 114 building
sites, and concluded that there was a considerable amount of waste that can
be avoided by adopting relatively simple prevention procedures. Some other
findings from Skoyles’s researches also pointed out that storage and
handling was a major cause of waste while most of the problems concerning
waste on building sites are related to flaws in the management system, and
have very little to do with the lack of qualification of workers.
Besides that, Formosa and his co-authors have also documented some extensive studies
and surveys done in Brazil, which the concentration of those studies were more towards
identifying the types of material wastes in construction. For example,
1. Pinto developed a study in 1989 based on one site only; pointing out for the fact
that indirect waste (materials unnecessarily incorporated in the building) can be
higher than direct waste (rubbish that should be disposed in other areas).
2. The first research project on construction waste developed at the Federal
University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) started in April 1992. The main
62
objective of that study was to analyse the main causes of material waste in the
building industry in order to propose guidelines for controlling it in small sized
firms. Seven building materials were monitored in five different sites during a
period ranging from five to six months.
3. The Brazilian Institute for Technology and Quality in Construction (ITQC) more
recently coordinated a much more ambitious research project on material waste
measurement, which was developed for the Brazilian construction industry,
involving 15 universities (including UFRGS) and more than one hundred
building sites. For over 2 years, eighteen materials had their waste monitored by
using a data collection method similar to the projects carried out at the Federal
University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in 1992.
Some conclusions that were drawn from those conventional construction waste studies
above such as:
1. The waste of building materials is occasionally far higher than the nominal
figures assumed by the companies in their cost estimates.
2. There is a very high variability of waste indices from site to site. Furthermore,
similar sites might present different levels of wastes for the same material. This
indicates that a considerable portion of this wastage can be avoided.
3. Some companies do not seem to be concerned about material waste, since they
do not apply relatively simple procedures to avoid waste on site. None of them
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had a well-defined material management policy, neither a systematic control of
material usage.
4. The lack of knowledge was an important cause of waste. Most building firms
did not know the amount of waste they had.
5. Most causes of waste are related to flaws in the management system, and have
very little to do with the lack of qualification and motivation of workers. Also,
waste is usually the result of a combination of factors, rather than originated by
an isolated incident.
6. A significant portion of waste is caused by problems, which occur in stages that
precede production, such as inadequate design, lack of planning, flaws in the
material supply system, etc.
From here, if we take a look at a different perspective, all the above construction waste
researches carried out would suggest that the flow aspects in construction have been
historically neglected while previous researches were mainly concentrated on the
conversion aspects in construction. If this assumption were true, it logically follows that
current construction would demonstrate a significant amount of waste, loss of value,
and non value-adding activities apart from the waste and value loss to the value-adding
activities.
64
4.3 Waste and value loss in construction
In search for the waste, loss of value and non value-adding activities in current
construction practices, Koskela (1992) has managed to present a few evidences from
various partial studies done by other researchers around the world apart from the
material waste from conversion activities. Although in his research paper entitled “The
Application of The New Production Philosophy to Construction” stated that there has
never been any systematic attempt to observe all wastes in a construction process but
nevertheless, partial studies can be used from various countries to indicate the order of
magnitude of non value-adding activities in construction. Basically, In Koksela’s
research paper, he has been looking for the evidences of waste and value loss due to
quality of works, material management, non-productive time, safety and
constructability.
4.3.1. Waste and value loss due to quality of works
The first element of waste and value loss was compiled in term of quality costs the
subsequent findings from 3 different projects are stated as follow:
1. In numerous studies from different countries done in 1991, the cost of poor
quality (no- conformance) as measured on site has turned out to be 10 - 20% of
total project costs. In a Belgian study, it has also recorded the causes of these
65
quality problems are 46% design-related, 22% construction-related and 15% are
related to material supply
2. In a very detailed Swedish study on a design-construct project carried out in
1991, the costs of quality failures for a construction company were found to be
6%. In Sweden and Germany, it was found out that external quality costs or the
loss of value (understood as exceptional maintenance) to owners during facility
use are estimated to be 3% of the value of annual construction production. In the
case of Sweden. 51% of these costs are associated with design problems, 36%
with construction problems and 9% with use problems.
3. In an American study of several industrial projects, deviation costs averaged
12.4% of the total installed project cost. The researchers of the study also
recorded the causes of these quality problems are 78% design-related, 17%
construction-related and 20% are related to material supply
4.3.2. Waste and value loss due to constructability
The second factor that contributed to waste and value loss as compiled by Koskela is
the factor of constructability. Constructability is the capability of a design to be
constructed, or in a more elaborated word, constructability of a design depends on the
consideration of construction constraints and possibilities. It was found from a
constructability report in 1986 stated that projects where constructability has been
specifically addressed have reported 6 - 10% savings of construction costs.
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4.3.3. Waste and value loss due to material management
Materials management in construction site was generally being neglected. Some
researchers such as Bell & Stukhart have estimated that 10 - 12% savings in labour
costs could be produced by materials-management systems. Furthermore, a reduction of
the bulk material surplus from 5 - 10% to 1 - 3% would result from a better material
management practice. Besides that, some researchers also reported that savings of 10%
in materials costs can be achieved from vendor cooperation in streamlining the material
flow.
4.3.4. Waste and value loss due to non-productive time
As for work flow processes, It has been found that construction work flow consists of a
lot of non value-adding activities where they consume a high percentage of overall
working time. All the estimation given from the researches compiled by Koskela, the
average distribution of working time used in value-adding activities ranging around
30% to 40%. Oglesby and his co-author estimated around 36% in 1989 while Levy in
1991 claimed that the average share of working time is 31.9 % in the United States.
There are similar figures from other countries but some other researches did show a
greater variance in percentage. For example, the average distribution of working time of
the 17 observed building projects survey in Chile conducted by Serpell, et al. (1995)
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during 1990 and 1994 shows that the minimum value of productive work was 35% and
the maximum was 55%.
4.3.5. Waste and value loss due to safety issues
Another waste factor is lack of safety. In the United States, safety-related costs are
estimated to be 6 percent of total project costs as reported by Levitt & Samelson in
1988.
Thus, there is strong empirical evidence showing that a considerable amount of waste
and loss of value exists in construction apart from the conventional understanding of
physical waste or material waste. A large part of these wastes has been hidden, and it
has not been perceived as actionable.
4.4 New concept of waste in production activities
In new production philosophy, “waste” has been given a broader concept and definition
as compared to its usual narrow meaning. According to the new production philosophy,
waste should be understood as any inefficiency that results in the use of equipment,
materials, labour, or capital in larger quantities than those considered as necessary in the
production of a building. Waste includes both the incidence of material losses and the
execution of unnecessary work, which generate additional costs but do not add value to
the product (Koskela 1992). Therefore, waste should be defined as any losses produced
68
by activities that generate direct or indirect costs but do not add any value to the product
from the point of view of the client.
Two other definitions below as quoted by Alarcon (1995) expressed the broaden
dimension of wastes as seen by new production paradigm.
Toyota defines waste as:
“Anything that is different from the minimum quantity of equipment,
material, parts and labour time that is absolutely essential for
production.”
A western definition for waste would be following:
“Anything different from the absolute minimum amount of resources of
materials, equipment, and manpower necessary to add value to the
product.”
In this lean production paradigm, the concept of waste is directly associated with the
use of resources that do not add value to the final product. This is very much different
from the conventional conversion view of production processes where not significant
attempts to separate the activities into value-adding or non value-adding activities. The
conventional view sees all activities combined as a whole and therefore waste is being
69
monitored and evaluated as a whole conglomerated additional costs to the production
and mainly it only captured costs for the material wastes. The new production
philosophy intend to look into and detail out the dimension of waste by identifying non
value-adding activities and introduce new measures to wastes such as additional costs or
opportunity costs especially due to time waste and value loss which very much invisible
in conversion model.
Figure 4.1 will show a clearer picture on the different in concept of waste for
conventional conversion model compared to new production philosophy.
Figure 4.1
Performance improvement in conventional, quality and new production philosophy approaches.
(Simplified from the figure of Koskela (1992))
Conventional View
New Production Philosophy
Total Cost of A
Process
Cost of non value-adding activities
Cost of value-adding activities
Performance
improvement
rationale:
Increase
process
efficiency
Reduce or eliminate non value-
adding activities and increase
process efficiency of value-
adding activities
70
This means that there are 2 approaches to improving processes for new production
philosophy compared to conventional conversion view. One is to improve the efficiency
of both value-adding and non value-adding work, and the other is to eliminate waste by
removing non value-adding activities. Therefore, waste should be defined as any losses
produced by activities that generate direct or indirect costs but do not add any value to
the product from the point of view of the client.
The ideal outcomes that can be pictured by adopting new production philosophy or lean
production will be production will be managed in the way that actions are aligned to
produce unique value for the client. Project duration and cost are considered in “project-
as-production system” terms making concern for project total cost and duration more
important than the cost or duration of any activity. Coordination is accomplished in
general by the central schedule while the details of work flow are managed throughout
the organisation by people who are aware of and support project goals performance.
The primary objectives for this new movement will be looking at value to the client and
throughput, the movement of information or materials to completion. Improvement
results from reducing waste that is the difference between the current situation and
perfection, i.e., meeting customer unique requirements in zero time with nothing in
store.
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4.5 Underlying the waste concepts in construction
In construction, the application of the lean production model mainly stems from a
discussion of Koskela's work, which emphasised the importance of the production
process flow, as well as aspects related to converting inputs into finished products as an
important element to reduce wasted value. Production should be seen as a flow that
generates value through conversion processes, characterised by cost, time frame, and
the degree of added value. In other word, the new production theory seeks cycle time
reduction, total waste elimination, zero defects and flexible output and in doing that, it
requires the evaluation of new measurements, such as waste, value, cycle time or
variability that was not covered under traditional concepts.
It is worthwhile to understand the construction production process before underlying the
waste concepts in construction. Koskela (1992) has proposed a flow process model, in
which production is conceived as a flow of materials and information through four
types of stages: transport (moving), waiting (delay), processing (conversion), and
inspection as shown in Figure 2. This model differentiates between value-adding
activities and non value-adding activities and also concentrates on the process flow
rather than the exchange among the processes. As a rule in this model, only processing
activities are value-adding activities. Reducing the share of the non value-adding
activities is the target for continuous improvement. (Koskela, 1992)
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Figure 4.2
Koskela’s flow process model (Koskela 1992)
Serpell et al. (1995) have proposed a much more open and dynamic construction
process model as described in Figure 4.3. The model presents the construction
production process on which work has been based on a system that correlated with the
environment around it. Part of the environment is controllable but other factors are
outside of its control.
Figure 4.3
Serpell’s Modeling of the construction process (Serpell et al. 1995)
MOVING WAITING PROCESSING
A
INSPECTION
MOVING WAITING PROCESSING
B
INSPECTION
REWORK
REWORK
REJECT
REJECT
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The main and most critical components of the construction process as portrayed in
Figure 4.3, are:
1. Flows and conversion management: Responsible of making the decision that
define the performance of the system
2. Flows: Are the inputs to the system and they contemplate all activities up until
the completion of the end product. Those inputs can be separated in two types,
resources (labour, materials and construction equipment), and information.
There are two types of flows as portrayed in the model: external flows and
internal flows. External flows are usually uncontrollable such as Suppliers’
provision of resources and design information. Internal flows are usually
controllable such as flows of materials from a warehouse.
3. Conversion activities: The processes that transform the flows into finished and
semi-finished products. The method used in this activities decided by the flows
and conversion management.
4. Products: The results of conversion activities.
There are three areas or elements of interest where waste can occur and improvements
can be carried out according to Serpell’s model:
74
1. Flows, both internal and external, which are the inputs to the conversion
activities and can be classified into two groups: construction resources
(materials, labour and equipment) and construction information.
2. Conversion processes and resultant products, which are the processes that
transform the flows into completed and partially completed products.
3. Flows and process management which corresponds to the management actions
and decisions that determine the way things are done and the application of
construction resources. This management is responsible for the performance of
the construction process and is characterised by different styles or approaches
according to companies and managers.
Waste elimination/ reduction (alongside value enhancement to construction), still
remained prominent focus in the current lean construction practices for process
improvement. This is because from experience shows those non value-adding activities,
which involved human in the flow of work, predominate in the majority of processes.
Taylor (1913) pointed out that the economic loss caused by material waste is smaller
than the ones related to the inefficiency of human work. Ford (1927) also suggested
that human work should be the focus of waste prevention, since the value of materials
depends, to a great extent, on the work that has been spent on them. Studies had shown
that usually around 3% to 20% of the steps add value, and their share in total cycle time
is only around 0.5% to 5% (Alarcon, 1994).
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4.6 Waste classification
Industry researchers and practitioners have acknowledged that there are many non-value
adding activities during the design and construction process and majority of those
wasteful activities consuming time and effort without adding value for the client. Since
the beginning of a construction project, Construction Managers have to deal with many
factors that may negatively affect the construction process, producing different types of
waste (Serpell et al, 1995). Waste includes both the incidence of material losses and the
execution of unnecessary work that generates additional costs but does not add value to
the product (Koskela, 1992). Moreover, some researchers, Alarcon (1993), Koskela
(1992) and Serpell et al. (1995) stated that waste in construction and manufacturing
include delay times, quality costs, lack of safety, rework, unnecessary transportation
trips, long distances, improper choice of management, methods or equipment and
poor constructability.
Regarding the possibility to control the incidence of waste, Formoso, et al. (1999)
commented that there is an acceptable level of waste, which can only be reduced
through a significant change in the level of technological development. Based on the
ratio of prevention investment cost over the cost of waste itself, they have classified
wastes into two general groups:
1. Unavoidable waste (or natural waste), in which the investment necessary to its
reduction is higher than the economy produced, The percentage of unavoidable
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waste in each process depends on the company and on the particular site, since it
is related to the level of technological development.
2. Avoidable waste, when the cost of waste is significantly higher than the cost to
prevent it.
Waste can also be classified according to its origin, i.e. the stage that the main root
cause is related to. Although waste is usually identified during the production stage, it
can be originated by processes that precede production, such as materials
manufacturing, training of human resources, design, materials supply, and planning.
However, the most classical waste classification according to lean production paradigm
is perhaps the classification done by Shigeo Shingo in his book “Study of Toyota
Manufacturing System” in 1981 as it has been quoted by various other lean construction
researches in relation of the study of wastes in construction example Alarcon (1994),
Womack and Jones, (1996), Formoso, et al. (1999), Koskela (2000) and many
others.
Shingo proposed the following waste classification whereby waste was classified by it
nature, which based on the Ohno’s framework of Toyota Production System:
1. Waste due to overproduction;
2. Waste due to wait periods;
3. Waste due to transport;
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4. Waste due to system itself;
5. Waste due to stock;
6. Waste due to operation;
7. Waste due to defects;
Based on Shingo’s seven wastes, Formoso, et al. (1999) went on to propose their main
classification of waste based on the analysis of some Brazilian building sites they had
carried out as shown below. It was thought that the further classification will help
managers to understand the different forms of waste, why they occur and how to act in
order to avoid them.
1. Overproduction: related to the production of a quantity greater than required or
earlier than necessary. This may cause waste of materials, man-hours or
equipment usage. It usually produces inventories of unfinished products or even
their total loss, in the case of materials that can deteriorate. An example of this
kind of waste is the overproduction of mortar that cannot be used on time.
2. Substitution: is monetary waste caused by the substitution of a material by a
more expensive one (with an unnecessary better performance); the execution of
simple tasks by an over-qualified worker; or the use of highly sophisticated
equipment where a much simpler one would be enough.
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3. Waiting time: related to the idle time caused by lack of synchronisation and
levelling of material flows, and pace of work by different groups or equipments.
One example is the idle time caused by the lack of material or by lack of work
place available for a gang.
4. Transportation: concerned with the internal movement of materials on site.
Excessive handling, the use of inadequate equipment or bad conditions of
pathways can cause this kind of waste. It is usually related to poor layout, and
the lack of planning of material flows. Its main consequneces are: waste of man
hours, waste of energy, waste of space on site, and the possibility of material
waste during transportation.
5. Processing: related to the nature of the processing (conversion) activity, which
could only be avoided by changing the construction technology. For instance, a
percentage of mortar is usually wasted when a ceiling is being plastered.
6. Inventories: related to excessive or unnecessary inventories which lead to
material waste (by deterioration, losses due to inadequate stock conditions on
site, robbery, vandalism), and monetary losses due to the capital that is tied up.
It might be a result of lack of resource planning or uncertainty on the estimation
of quantities.
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7. Movement: concerned with unnecessary or inefficient movements made by
workers during their job. This might be caused by inadequate equipment,
ineffective work methods, or poor arrangement of the working place.
8. Production of defective products: it occurs when the final or intermediate
product does not fit the quality specifications. This may lead to rework or to the
incorporation of unnecessary materials to the building (indirect waste), such as
the excessive thickness of plastering. It can be caused by a wide range of
reasons: poor design and specification, lack of planning and control, poor
qualification of the team work, lack of integration between design and
production, etc.
9. Others: waste of any nature different from the previous ones, such as burglary,
vandalism, inclement weather, accidents, etc.
Some researchers have proposed some qualitative model by postulating the loss of
productivity in construction using categories of non-productive time. Researchers such
as Borcherding in 1986 explained the loss of productivity in large and complex
constructions using five categories of non-productivities time as listed below:
1. Waste due to waiting or idle;
2. Waste due to travelling;
3. Waste due to slow work;
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4. Waste due to ineffective work;
5. Waste due to rework
Borcherding’s five waste categories of non-productive time are found very much
similar to the categories of wastes of productive time proposed by Serpell et. al (1995)
derived from their case studies as shown Figure 4.4 below:
Figure 4.4
Categories of wastes of productive time (Serpell et al. 1995)
However, they highlighted some limitations to the waste classification of non-
productive time for example the waste of time related to slow work is related to the
efficiency of processes, construction equipment and personnel. But it is difficult to
measure it because it is first necessary to know the optimal efficiency that can be
achieved, which is not always possible.
Waste of time
(man-hours &
equipment time)
Work
inactivity
Ineffective
work
Waiting time
Idle time
Travelling
Resting
Physiological needs
Reworking
Working slowly
Inventing work
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Instead of classifying the waste of productive time, Serpell et. al (1995) went a step
further to breakdown those wastes factors in relation of work categories. There are 3
types of work categories as proposed:
1. Productive work (value-adding activities)
2. Contributory work (non value-adding activities but essential for conversion
process): Those contributory work which are classified as waste include
transporting, instruction, measuring, cleaning and others
3. Non-contributory work (non value-adding activities): Those non contributory
work which are classified as waste include waiting, idle time, travelling, resting,
physiological needs, and rework
There are also other categories of waste that have been mentioned in the literature, such
as accidents, working under sub-optimal conditions (Koskela 2000), design and
products that do not meet users’ needs. (Womack and Jones 1996) The main role of
existing classification of waste is to call the attention of people to most likely problems,
since not all waste is obvious: it “often appears in the guise of useful work.” (Shingo
1988)
4.7 Key construction waste causes
After understanding the classification of waste, it is important to examine the type of
possible causes that lead to the occurrence of waste in construction process. This is
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deem important because just by knowing the waste itself just would help to monitor
them but not reduce or eliminate them from the process loops. To work out a
continuous improvement strategy in reducing and eliminating those wastes in
construction processes, the origin of the waste itself has to be identified.
A typical waste identification survey underlined a few examples of waste sources
according to different area of functions such as administration, use of resources and
information systems. Several potential sources of waste can be grouped under the
particular area of functions and it can be created to suit the need of particular projects
such as the diagnostic survey developed by students Francisco Lowener, Francisco Lira
and Marcelo Beratto as documented by Alarcon (1994) listed down the following
potential sources of waste in their project:
A. Administration
1. Unnecessary requirements
2. Excessive control
3. Lack of control
4. Poor planning
5. Bureaucracy
B. Use of resources
1. Surplus
2. Shortage
3. Misuse
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4. Poor distribution
5. Poor quality
6. Availability
C. Information systems
1. Unnecessary
2. Defective
3. Late
4. Unclear
Serpell et. al (1995) on the other hand identified several controllable causes of waste.
Although his study was mainly concentrated on wasted time but the classification of the
causes to waste is found rather structured and detailed compared to the previous listed
in waste identification survey. They divided the controllable wastes as identified from
their research projects into three different activities, which associate to flows,
conversions, and management activities.
1. Controllable causes associated to flows
The principal flow causes were as follow:
a) Resources
q Materials: Lack of materials at the work place; materials are not well
distributed; inadequate transportation means
q Equipment: Non availability; inefficient utilisation; inadequate
equipment for work needs
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q Labour: personal attitudes of workers; stoppage of work
b) Information
q Lack of information;
q Poor information quality
q Timing of delivery is inadequate
2. Controllable causes associated to conversions
The following causes were identified:
a) Method
q Deficient design of work crews
q Inadequate procedures
q Inadequate support to work activities
b) Planning
q Lack of work space
q Too much people working in reduced space
q Poor work conditions
c) Quality
q Poor execution of work
q Damages to work already finished
3. Controllable causes associated to management activities
The following causes were identified:
a) Decision making
q Poor allocation of work to labour
q Poor distribution of personnel
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b) Ineffective supervision/ control
q Poor or lack of supervision
4.8 Modeling waste and performance in construction
Modelling and evaluation of wastes and performance in construction projects has been a
challenge for the construction industry for decades. Several models and procedures have
been proposed for the evaluation of project performance at site and project level. Some
of these models focus on prediction of project performance while others focus on
measuring. Traditional models offer only a limited set of measures as most of them
limit their analysis to a number of measures such as cost, schedule, or productivity
(usually labour productivity).
The introduction of new production philosophies in construction requires new measures
of performance (Koskela, 1992), such as waste, value, cycle time or variability. The
shortcomings of the traditional control systems, and models are unable or not
appropriate to measure those new performance elements but Alarcon (1993) suggested
that some of the concepts developed in previous research can be utilised in modelling
new performance elements for construction required for continuos improvement.
It is worthwhile to point out some of opinions of different researchers and authors
related to the extent of performance elements in the aspects of construction process.
Among all, one of the most classical opinions was from Sink (1985, as documented by
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Alarcon 1993). Sink has characterised performance in a broad definition, as 7 criteria
or elements on which management should focus its efforts on: Those 7 criteria or
elements are as explained below:
1. Effectiveness: A measure of accomplishment of the ‘right’ things:
a) On time (timeliness),
b) Right (quality),
c) All the ‘right’ things (quantity), where ‘things’ are goals, objectives,
activities and so forth,
2. Efficiency: A measure of utilization of resources. It can be represented as a ratio
of resource expected to be consumed divided by the resources actually
consumed
3. Quality: A measure of conformance to specifications. In construction projects,
quality has 2 dimensions:
a) The first and overall one is that of the completed project functioning as the
owner intended
b) The second concerns the many details involved in producing the results
4. Productivity: Theoretically this is defined as a ratio between output and input
and it is primary measured in terms of cost. In the context of the construction
industry, the output is the structure or facility that is built or some components
of it. The major input into the construction process includes work force,
materials, equipment, management, energy and capital.
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5. Quality of work life: A measure of employees’ affective response to working
and living in organizational systems. Often, the management focus is on
insuring that employees are ‘satisfied’, safe and secure and so forth
6. Innovation: This is the creative process of adaptation of product, service,
process or structure in response to internal as well as external pressures,
demands and changes, needs and so forth
7. Profitability: A measure or a set of measures of the relationships between
financial resources and uses for those financial resources. For example,
revenues/ costs, return on assets and return on investments.
Embarking with the new production philosophies, Koskela (1992) has proposed some
new measures as required for construction, to stimulate continuous improvement such
as:
1. Waste: Number of defects, rework, number of design errors and omissions,
number of change orders, safety costs, excess consumption of materials, etc;
2. Value: Value of the output to the internal customer;
3. Cycle time: Cycle time of main processes and sub processes;
4. Variability: Deviations from the target, such as schedule performance.
The problem of performance evaluation is a multi-attribute or multi-criteria one.
Generally, the evaluations of performance in construction are concentrated on few
aspects only mainly on profitability and productivity. Furthermore, different managers
probably will use different performance elements and some will have different weight
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for each individual measures. Therefore, a model for evaluation or prediction must have
the flexibility to include the individual organisational objectives in the evaluation
process. It also must have the ability to examine the effect of changes in those
objectives in the evaluation process.
There are a few categories of performance and evaluation models, which can be
grouped by the functions of each model as discussed in Luis F. Alarcon (1993) in his
paper entitled “ Modeling waste and performance in construction”.
1. Measurement and Performance Evaluation Models
Function: Establish a framework for measurement and evaluation that may allow
improved quality of the information available for decision-making and research.
Examples:
a) Delay models use stopwatch techniques to record productive time and delay
occurring during the day
b) Work study-based models which are extensively used to indirectly measure
labour productivity
c) Activity models use work sampling techniques to catagorise activities
observed into productive, supportive or idle times.
2. Prediction Models
Function: Provide systematic procedures to account for the different factors that
affect productivity
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3. The Productivity Theory Factors Model
Function: Provides both standard procedures for collecting information and a
more rigorous way of accounting for productivity factors.
4. The Conceptual Construction Process Model
Function: Shows a different perspective on the problem that explains more
thoroughly the functional relationships and influences that affect productivity
5. Casual Models
Function: Provide a qualitative model structure to explore actions that can affect
productivity and to understand the mechanisms which product the results.
It is important to build a bridge between traditional and new philosophies in
construction performance improvement. As suggested by Alarcon (1993) that
traditional models and concepts in measuring and evaluating performance elements can
be improvised in order to incorporated new performance elements proposed by new
production philosophies.
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CHAPTER 5
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
5.1 Introduction
This chapter will explain the methodology in carrying out this academic research.
Aspects involved included method of research, research subjects, tools for analysis,
points or marks assignment, sequences of research, and analysis of the research data.
5.2 Method of research
The purposes of this research are to see whether the lean construction principles of
waste concepts have been well comprehended, accepted and adopted by the local
construction personnel especially in waste recognition, reduction and elimination for the
continuous improvement in construction processes. A quantitative research approach
was adopted for this research requiring the development and dissemination of a
questionnaire survey. Due to the population of this research are virtually too difficult to
be quantified as the main targeted respondents would include all personnel who has
direct managerial experiences in construction field, the non-probability sampling
methods will be adopted in this research instead of probability sampling. Purposive
sampling for specific groups or types of respondents will be conducted by using expert
sampling technique which involves the assembling of a sample of managerial personnel
with known or demonstrable experience and expertise in managing construction field
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processes. The expert sampling has been seen as the best way to elicit the views of
those who have specific expertise and experiences dealing with the local construction
practices. It is also very useful for situations where a targeted sample needs to be reach
quickly and where sampling for proportionality is not the primary concern in this
research.
The research is conducted through structured questionnaires where those questionnaires
were sent to the particular “qualified” respondents. The respondents were approached
through their companies and firms, which registered in the CIDB annual directory
yearbook. A pilot survey was conducted during November year 2003 where 20 sets of
questionnaires were sent out to a random group of pilot respondents in postal mail (with
returned envelop and stamp attached) around peninsular Malaysia for a period of 1
month but the respond rate to the questionnaires were are low with only 2 sets of
surveys were returned during the trial period.
Due to the circumstances of low respond rate in the pilot survey, a new approach of
distributing the questionnaires has been taken. The targeted research locations have
been focus more into northern region of peninsular Malaysia where direct contacts with
the potential qualified respondents were more easily accessible. Besides 20 new sets of
questionnaires were posted out together with 20 sets post out through e-mail throughout
peninsular Malaysia, there were also 30 sets of questionnaires were hand-delivered
(mainly in northern Peninsular Malaysia) to the respondents from December 2003 until
February 2004. Until the due date, 27 of questionnaires were returned (including 2 from
pilot survey) which represented an average response rate of 30%. Compared to the 40%
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average response rate for the 5 years quantitative research carried out by Alwi et al
(2002) on construction wastes in Indonesia with 300 questionnaires sent, this research
carried out are considerably low in average response rate but if compared to the
timeframe and resources available for data collection in this research, the 30% response
rate are reasonably acceptable for numbers of questionnaires sent.
This research was postulated around determining the general perceptions and actions of
the construction personnel against wastes in construction and the concept of non-
productive time or wasted time as suggested by Serpell et al. (1995) were then
integrated into the research process as the key element of lean construction philosophy
regarding flow concept. In this case, Waste in construction process is classified into
three main categories, which are direct conversion waste, non-contributory time waste
and contributory time waste. 19 waste elements are outlined consists of 9 direct
conversion wastes, 7 non-contributory time wastes and 3 contributory time wastes as
shown in Table 5.1 and all those waste elements were derived from different previous
studies carried out by Serpell et al (1995), Alarcon (1994 & 1995), Formosa, et al
(1999 & 2002) and Alwi et al (2002).
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Direct Conversion Wastes Non-Contributory Wastes Contributory Wastes
1 Over-allocation/ unnecessary
equipment on site
Waiting for others to complete
their works before the
proceeding works can be
carried out (idle time)
Time in supervising and
inspecting the construction
works
2 Over-allocation/ unnecessary
materials on site
Waiting for equipment to be
delivered on site
Time for instructions and
communication among
different tiers and trades of
workers
3 Over-allocation/ unnecessary
workers on site
Waiting for materials to be
delivered on site
Time for transporting workers,
equipment and materials
4 Unnecessary procedures and
working protocols
Waiting for the skilled workers
to be on site
5 Material loss/ stolen from site
during construction periods
Waiting for the clarification
and confirmation by client and
consultants
6 Material deterioration/
damaged during construction
periods
Time for rework/ repair works/
defective works
(Rework)
7 Mishandling or error in
construction applications/
installation
Time for workers’ resting
during construction
(Physiological needs &
Resting)
8 Materials for rework/ repair
works/ defective works
9 Accidents on site
Table 5.1
Waste elements in 3 separate waste groups
In response to the examine the frequencies causes of wastes and their inter-relation with
waste elements, several waste causes factors were also substrated from previous
literature studies by Serpell et al (1995), Alarcon (1994 & 1995) and Alwi et al (2002)
and categorised into 5 main groups of cause factors which are Management &
Administration Factors (4 factors), People Factors (6 factors), Execution Factors (6
factors), Material Factors (6 factors) and Information and Communication Factors (3
factors). The entire breakdown of the waste cause factors is shown in Table 5.2.
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Management & Administration Factors
1 Poor coordination among project participants
2 Poor planning and scheduling
3 Lack of control
4 Bureaucracy
People Factors
1 Lack of trades skills
2 Inexperience inspectors
3 Too few supervisors/ foreman
4 Uncontrolled sub-contracting practices
5 Supervision too late
6 Poor labour distribution
Execution Factors
1 Inappropriate construction methods
2 Outdated equipment
3 Equipment shortage
4 Poor equipment choice or ineffective equipment
5 Poor site layout and setting out
6 Poor site documentation
Material Factors
1 Delay of material delivery
2 Poorly scheduled delivery of material to site
3 Poor quality of material
4 Inappropriate/ misuse of material
5 Poor storage of material
6 Poor material handling on site
Information and Communication Factors
1 Defective or Wrong information
2 Late information and decision making
3 Unclear information
Table 5.2
Waste Causes Factor Group
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5.3 Profile of respondents
A randomly selected group of targeted respondents consists of those personnel who
have a commanding role in the construction process and resource management and
extensive site experiences were targeted as respondents for the sample survey. There
has been a wide spectrum of personnel with different position and job title, which had
been responded to the survey and for the purpose of analysis and comparison, the whole
sample of respondents have been regrouped into 2 main categories which are
1. Project management orientated group
2. Site operative management orientated group
Project management orientated group will feature those who have relatively more
responsibilities in overall project execution and resource management and not so much
on site operative management by its nature of job scope. Therefore, this group will
involve personnel more on planning, inter-coordinating and directing role in
construction process and as for the sample respondents for this research will include
project managers, general managers, project schedulers/ planners, quantity surveyors.
While Site operative management orientated group will feature those who have
relatively more responsibilities on the site operative management by its nature of job
scope. The group will mainly involve personnel in solving construction problems on
site, more on intra-coordinating with internal groups and trades, and as for the sample
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respondents for this research will include site managers, site engineers, resident
architect/ engineer and senior quality manager.
5.4 Structure of questionnaires
The structure of questionnaires is divided into 5 main sections. (Refer sample of
questionnaire in Appendix 5) The first 2 sections of questionnaires are intended to
examine the general perception and acceptance of Lean Construction philosophy of
local construction industries based on the respondents’ waste concepts. In this case, the
respondents were asked to recognise 19 wastes elements and their personnel
experiences in controlling those waste elements during construction processes. There
are 2-options available for the respondents and there were required to answer whether
the wastes elements as listed is a waste or non-waste and whether they are controlled or
not controlled during the construction processes.
The third and fourth sections are intended to review the extent of waste problems in
existing local industry by ranking them in term of frequencies of occurrences and rate
the likelihood of particular waste sources/ causes in their construction practices where
they work. For section 3, Respondents were able to identify how frequently the waste
occurred using 5 categories: (1) Never; (2) Very Rare; (3) Seldom; (4) Frequent; and (5)
Very Frequent and the respondents were provided with five different scales from 1 (no
significant effect variable) to 5 as (high detrimental effect variable); Foe section 4,
Respondents were asked to determine the likelihood of particular waste sources/ causes
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using 4 categories: (1) Most unlikely; (2) Unlikely; (3) Likely; (4) Most Likely and the
respondents were provided with five different scales from 1 (no significant likelihood)
to 5 as (high detrimental likelihood)
The fifth section is to examine the relevant sources of wastes as outlined in the fourth
section to have caused the particular construction wastes. The respondents were asked
to identify the most possible causes and other possible causes to the wastes elements in
order to create a matrix table between construction wastes and their sources of wastes.
5.5 Score Assignment
Score assignment is a process of assigning values for each of the item and this is an
important process of conducting inferential analysis especially for correlation test using
Pearson-r where aggregation of points are required for this research. Score assignment
for section 1 and 2, each positive answer is assigned with 2 points and each negative
answer is assigned with 1 point. Based on the waste categories in Table 5.1, the
maximum points for direct conversion wastes that can be aggregated for each case is (2
X 9) equal to 18 points and the minimum of (1 X 9) equal to 9 points; Maximum points
for non-contributory time waste is (2 X 7) or 14 points and minimum of (1 X 7) or 7
points whereas for maximum points for contributory time wastes is (2 X 3) or 6 points
and minimum of (1 X 3) or 3 points
Score assignment for section 3 and 4 is based on the multiple-scale format. For section
3, points are ranged from 1 to 5 and maximum points that can be aggregated for direct
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conversion wastes is (5 X 9) or 45 points, minimum of (1 X 9) or 9 points; for non-
contributory time wastes, maximum that can be achieved is (5 X 7) or 35 points and
minimum of (1 X 7) or 7 points while maximum for contributory time wastes is (5 X 3)
or 15 points and minimum of (1 X 3) or 3 points. For section 4, points are ranged from
1 to 4 but since correlation are not going to be tested in this section but rather each item
is going to be tested separately with One-way t-test for ranking purposes, therefore not
aggregation of points are required.
5.6 Analysis Methods
After all the primary data have been collected and processed, those data will then be
analysed according to the appropriate analysis methods. Analysis methods in this
research are mainly divided into 2 parts: (1) Descriptive analysis and (2) Inferential
statistical analysis. Descriptive statistical analysis is used to present the background
profiles about the respondents and provide further information for the inferential
statistical analysis, besides that, the analysis on the descriptive data about the waste
recognition and waste control events in section 1 & 2 will also be conducted under the
same category. Inferential statistical analysis will be used to test certain research
hypothesis, type of analysis tools to be used include Coefficient Pearson r for
correlation testing and one-way t-test for frequencies ranking.
In most analyses carried out in 3 separate categories namely direct conversion wastes,
contributory process time wastes and non-contributory process time wastes in order to
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see the different between each categories especially dealing with contributory process
wastes and non contributory process waste which is rarely considered in conventional
waste concepts for construction processes.
Although it is logically understood that when we recognised certain wastes, we will try
our best to avoid it or control it, however, in this research, the inter-relationship
between understanding of wastes and actual control practices of wastes in construction
processes will be examined in order to found out any contradictions to the logic of
relationship between recognising the waste and the actions in controlling them. 4
different scenarios are anticipated which are extreme scenarios where type of waste
elements are recognised as waste and have been given a proper attention in controlling
them or vice versa not recognising them and therefore not given any control actions into
it. Of course, another 2 scenarios the cases would be the potential cases of recognising
the waste elements but do not act on them or vice verse acting on certain waste elements
which they are not recognised as waste.
On the other hand, Inferential statistic analysis will use correlation Pearson-r to conduct
testing on 9 hypotheses to see whether any significant inter-relationship existed between
understanding of wastes and actual control practices of wastes in construction processes
based on 3 cases of waste categories. The 9 hypotheses are:
Hypothesis 1: There is inter-relationship between construction’s direct conversion
wastes are been perceived with the tendency to control those wastes
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Hypothesis 2: There is inter-relationship between construction’s direct conversion
wastes are been perceived with the frequencies of occurrences of such
wastes during the processes
Hypothesis 3: There is inter-relationship between the tendency to control those
construction’s direct conversion wastes with the frequencies of
occurrences of such wastes during the processes
Hypothesis 4: There is inter-relationship between construction’s non-contributory time
wastes are been perceived with the tendency to control those wastes
Hypothesis 5: There is inter-relationship between construction’s non-contributory time
wastes are been perceived with the frequencies of occurrences of such
wastes during the processes
Hypothesis 6: There is inter-relationship between the tendency to control those
construction’s non-contributory time wastes with the frequencies of
occurrences of such wastes during the processes
Hypothesis 7: There is inter-relationship between construction’s contributory time
wastes are been perceived with the tendency to control those wastes
Hypothesis 8: There is inter-relationship between construction’s contributory time
wastes are been perceived with the frequencies of occurrences of such
wastes during the processes
Hypothesis 9: There is inter-relationship between the tendency to control those
construction’s contributory time wastes with the frequencies of
occurrences of such wastes during the processes
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In every case above, the correlation Pearson-r will tell us the magnitude and direction of
the association between two variables. SPSS creates a correlation matrix of the two
variables. All the information we need is in the cell that represents the intersection of
the two variables.
In SPSS, the outcomes of the Pearson-r analysis will provide us three pieces of
information: (1) the correlation coefficient, (2) the significance and (3) the number of
cases (N)
The correlation coefficient is a number between +1 and -1. This number tells us about
the magnitude and direction of the association between two variables. The magnitude is
the strength of the correlation. The closer the correlation is to either +1 or -1, the
stronger the correlation. If the correlation is 0 or very close to zero, there is no
association between the two variables. The direction of the correlation tells us how the
two variables are related. If the correlation is positive, the two variables have a positive
relationship (as one increases, the other also increases). If the correlation is negative, the
two variables have a negative relationship (as one increases, the other decreases).
One-Way t-test will be carried out basically to get the ranking on the frequencies of
occurrence of the wastes elements in section 3 and the likelihood of recognition certain
wastes causes factors as in section 4. In SPSS, the outcomes of the One-Way t-test
analysis will provide us four pieces of information: (1) the number of cases (N), (2) the
mean value, (3) the standard deviation and (4) the standard error means. The ranking
will be done separately in a descending order from the greatest magnitude of the mean
102
value to the lowest mean value to differentiate the degree of frequencies and likelihood
from the less significant to the most significant as rated by the respondent of the
research.
The last part of the analysis will be involving the development of the Causes and
Effects Matrix table by combining all the inputs by the respondents in section 5 into the
whole list of construction wastes and waste causes table. From there, descriptive
statistic analysis will take place in sorting out the wastes causes factors and put them
into 6 wastes factors as discussed previously and represent the Matrix Table in Bar
charts format for easy interpretation of the results.
103
CHAPTER 6
DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
6.1 Introduction
This chapter will present all the results obtained from the data analysis waste concepts
and waste causes factors in construction processes. Descriptive statistic analysis and
inferential statistic analysis will be utilised to present the results. The presentation of
analysis of descriptive statistic analysis will be conducted in the form of bar charts, pie
charts and matrix tables to show the distribution and frequencies of the particular
variables. The presentation of analysis of inferential statistic analysis will be done by
using result outputs generated directly from SPSS 10.0
6.2 Descriptive analysis results
This section will discuss about the analysis results from descriptive analysis. The
segments, which are in the discussion, include information about the respondents and
their organisation’s background and the respondent’s waste perceptions and control
actions grouped under the waste categories as outlined in Chapter 5.
104
6.2.1 Respondents and their organisation’s background
There are 5 segments analysed under this category include the position of the
respondents in their organisation, nature of their work grouped as outlined in Chapter 5,
main core construction projects handled by their organisation, CIDB registration grade
of their firm, and their main project clients. This descriptive analysis will eventually
show the actual profile of the respondents who have eventually taken this waste
construction study.
105
6.2.1.1 Position of respondents
The respondents for this research consists of 27 project and site management personnel
with a wide spectrum of positions ranging from project manager, project planner,
general manager, quantity surveyor, resident engineer/ architect, site engineer, site
manager and senior quality manager. Results from the data analysis has seen that 2
position of respondents figured almost 63% of all the other position held by the
respondents in the organisation, those two positions are project manager (9 Nos) and
site engineer (8 Nos). The composition of the respondent’s position are shown in the
Figure 6.1 below:
Figure 6.1
Composition of respondent’s position
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Nos.
1
Position
Project Manager
Project Planner
General Manager
Quantity Surveyor
Site Manager
Site Engineer
Resident Architect/ Engineer
Sr. Quality Manager
106
6.2.1.2 Nature of work of respondents
Based on the data of the respondent’s position in their organisation, the further
categorisation of their positions has to be conducted for the purposes of statistic analysis
later in the chapter. The categorisation is based on the nature of work as outlined in
chapter 5. 27 respondents are to be categorised into 2 main groups, which are project
management orientated group and site operative management group. The results from
the categorisation found that there is rather balance in term of percentage between both
designated groups where each holds approximate 50% from the poll. Figure 6.2 will
present the percentage of those different groups
Figure 6.2
Percentage of categorisation of respondent’s nature of work
52%
48%
Project Management
Site Management
107
6.2.1.3 Main core construction projects involved by the respondent’s organisation
Respondents were asked to select the most appropriate type of construction project,
which represent the main core construction projects involved by their company. The
results from the data analysis show almost 78% of the records for core construction
projects are made up of public & community buildings (8 Nos), residential &
commercial scheme (7 Nos) and Industrial projects (6 Nos). High-rise building and civil
& road construction each only recorded 3 Nos. each by the respondents as main core
construction projects by their firm. Figure 6.3 shows the composition of the projects
distribution:
Figure 6.3
Composition of the main core construction projects by the respondent’s company
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Nos.
1
Main core construction projects
Highrise Building
Residential & Commercial
BuildingIndustrial Building
Public & Community Building
Civil & Road Construction
108
6.2.1.4 CIDB registration grade of the respondent’s companies
The respondents were also asked to indicate the CIDB registration grade into 2
categories that are Below Grade 3 and Grade 3 and above. The analysis results from this
sample of respondents show that big portions of respondent’s companies obtain CIDB
registration Grade 3 and above which are almost 83% of the total sample or (22 Nos).
Only 3 companies are with CIDB registration below grade 3 only or about 11% of the
overall sample while there are 2 Nos. missing input in this field. (Refer Figure 6.4)
Figure 6.4
CIDB registration of the respondent’s company
11%
82%
7%
below Grade 3
Grade3 & Above
Missing
109
6.2.1.5 Main project clients
There are 2 types of main project clients classified related to the projects that their
company was engaged with and the respondents are to select between private clients
and public clients as their main project clients. The analysis results recorded a fair share
of main project client based among this sample of respondents where 15 of the
respondents reported that their main clients are from the private sectors (or about 55%)
and 12 of the respondents reported their main clients are from public sectors (or about
45%). (Refer Figure 6.5)
Figure 6.5 Percentages of main project clients of the respondent’s company
56%
44%
Private
Public
110
6.2.2 Respondent’s waste perceptions and control actions
The descriptive analysis on the respondent’s waste perceptions and control actions will
mainly focusing on identifying the numbers of counts on wastes recognised and waste
events controlled as reckon by the respondents for 3 waste categories as defined in
Chapter 5 namely, direct conversion wastes, non contributory wastes and contributory
wastes.
Since the lean construction philosophy considered all those waste elements as tabulated
in the questionnaires as construction wastes which need to be reduced, eliminated or
somehow controlled, the degree of perceptions on wastes for the local construction
industries eventually can be verified by determining the numbers of positive counts on
each of those wastes elements. Besides that, an analysis over a matrix tables by cross-
tabbing both the waste concepts and waste control actions will be carried out to study
the frequencies of 4 different potential scenarios which are anticipated to be occurred.
6.2.2.1 Analysis on direct conversion wastes
Under this category, there are 9 wastes elements, which were asked to be identified by
the respondents based on their own experience and opinion. Those items are indexed as
F, G, H, I, J, K, L, N, S in the section A, B and C of the questionnaires. For the total of
27 respondents by calculation as (9 X 27), it sums up a total of 243 overall counts of
inputs.
111
For construction waste recognition, all the inputs are tabulated in Table 6.1 below and a
total of 204 positive counts are recorded or approximately 84% and it is shown a high
recognition on the waste concepts for the elements tested in this category.
# F G H I J K L N S
1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 NON WASTE
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 WASTE
3 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2
4 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
5 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2
6 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
7 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2
8 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 2
9 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2
10 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 2
11 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
12 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2
13 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1
14 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
15 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 2
16 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
17 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
18 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
19 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2
20 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
21 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1
22 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 2
23 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
24 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
25 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
26 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2
27 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
Table 6. 1
Construction waste recognition under direct conversion waste category
Legend:
F: Over-allocation/ Unnecessary equipment on site
G: Over-allocation/ unnecessary materials on site
H: Over-allocation/ unnecessary workers on site
I: Unnecessary procedures and working protocols
J: Material loss/ stolen from site during construction
periods
K: Material deterioration/ damaged during
construction periods
L: Mishandling or error in construction applications/
installation
N: Materials for rework/ repair works/ defective works
S: Accidents on site
Note: The values given in the table do not have
any significant meaning in this descriptive
statistic analysis, as they are values inputs for
inferential statistic analysis later in the chapter
112
This analysis concluded that a high recognition rate on direct conversion wastes by the
respondents. The breakdown of numbers of the waste elements recognised as wastes
under this direct conversion category are shown in Figure 6.6 below. The result shows
that Item N: (Materials for rework/ repair works/ defective work) is the most recognised
construction wastes with 26 positive counts while Item F: (Over-allocation/
Unnecessary equipment) is the least recognised construction wastes with only 19
positive counts under the direct conversion waste category.
Figure 6.6
Breakdown of direct conversion waste recognition cases
For construction waste events control, due to a respondent miss out on the whole range
of input for this section, the total counts will calculated as (9 X 26) equal to 234Nos. of
inputs as tabulated in Table 6.2 below. A total of 168 positive counts are recorded or
19
8
22
5
20
7
22
5
23
4
24
3
25
2
26
1
23
4
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
F G H I J K L N S
Non Waste
Waste
113
approximately 72% and it shows a slight drop in percentage on the waste control
practices for the elements tested compared to the construction waste recognised
previously by the same set of respondents. In other words, the respondents recognise the
direct conversion wastes more than eventually control them.
# F G H I J K L N S
1 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 1 1 NOT CONTROL
2 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 1 2 CONTROL
3 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 - MISSING
4 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1
5 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2
6 - - - - - - - - -
7 2 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 1
8 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
9 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
10 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 1 1
11 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 2 1
12 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 2
13 2 2 2 1 2 2 1 2 2
14 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
15 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1
16 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2
17 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
18 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2
19 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
20 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1
21 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2
22 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
23 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1
24 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1
25 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2
26 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 1
27 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
Table 6.2 Construction waste control practices under direct conversion waste category
However, the analysis result still shows that there are high control exercises on direct
conversion wastes as reported by the respondents. The breakdown of numbers of the
Legend:
F: Over-allocation/ Unnecessary equipment on site
G: Over-allocation/ unnecessary materials on site
H: Over-allocation/ unnecessary workers on site
I: Unnecessary procedures and working protocols
J: Material loss/ stolen from site during construction
periods
K: Material deterioration/ damaged during
construction periods
L: Mishandling or error in construction applications/
installation
N: Materials for rework/ repair works/ defective works
S: Accidents on site
Note: The values given in the table do not have
any significant meaning in this descriptive
statistic analysis, as they are values inputs for
inferential statistic analysis later in the chapter
114
waste elements recognised as wastes under this direct conversion waste category are
shown in Figure 6.7. From chart in Figure 7 however shows that Item F: (Over-
allocation/ Unnecessary equipment on site) have the highest positive counts (22 Nos)
on event controlled while Item S: (Accidents on site) is recorded as the least event
controlled with 12 Nos. of positive counts.
Figure 6.7 Breakdown of direct conversion waste event control cases
By cross tabbing of both Table 6.1 & 6.2 will result in a matrix table as show in Table
6.3 below. This matrix table can be used to explain the inter-relationship between the
direct conversion waste concepts of the respondents with their actual control practices
on construction processes. As anticipated, there are 4 potential scenarios as observed,
which are Case 1: Waste recognised and controlled; Case 2: Waste not recognised and
22
4
1
20
6
1
20
6
1
18
8
1
16
10
1
19
7
1
20
6
1
20
6
1
12
14
1
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
F G H I J K L N S
Missing
Non Control
Control
115
not controlled; Case 3: Waste recognised but not controlled and Case 4: Waste not
recognised but controlled.
# F G H I J K L N S
1 137 Case 1: Waste & Control
2 8 Case 2: Non Waste & Not Control
3 58 Case 3: Waste & Not Control
4 31 Case 4: Non Waste & Control
5 - Matrix not available due to missing input
6 - - - - - - - - -
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Table 6.3
Matrix table between waste concepts and control practices for direct conversion wastes
From the analysis, it is found that Case 1 is the most occurrence scenario with 137 cases
(58.5%) followed by Case 3: 58 cases (24.8%), Case 4: 38 cases (13.2%) and finally
Case 2: 8 cases (3.5%). However, These results show that over half of the direct
conversion construction wastes have fully been recognised and controlled
simultaneously but this analysis result is not very convincing as there are still very high
Legend:
F: Over-allocation/ Unnecessary equipment on site
G: Over-allocation/ unnecessary materials on site
H: Over-allocation/ unnecessary workers on site
I: Unnecessary procedures and working protocols
J: Material loss/ stolen from site during construction
periods
K: Material deterioration/ damaged during
construction periods
L: Mishandling or error in construction applications/
installation
N: Materials for rework/ repair works/ defective works
S: Accidents on site
116
percentage of cases where wastes were partially recognised and controlled and not
recognised and controlled at all.
117
6.2.2.2 Analysis on non-contributory time wastes
Under this category, there are only 7 wastes elements, which were asked to be identified
by the respondents based on their own experience and opinion. Those items are indexed
as A, B, C, D, E, M and O in the section A, B and C of the questionnaires. For the total
of 27 respondents by calculation as (7 X 27), it sums up a total of 189 overall counts of
inputs.
For construction waste recognition, all the inputs are tabulated in Table 6.4 below and a
total of 129 positive counts are recorded or approximately 68% and it is still a high
recognition on the waste concepts for the elements tested in this category but it is
relatively lower in percentage compared to analysis carried out previously on direct
conversion waste.
118
# A B C D E M O
1 1 2 2 2 1 2 1 1 NON WASTE
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 WASTE
3 2 1 1 1 1 2 1
4 2 1 1 2 2 2 1
5 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
6 2 2 2 2 1 2 2
7 2 2 1 2 2 2 1
8 2 2 2 2 2 1 1
9 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
10 1 1 1 1 2 1 2
11 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
12 2 2 2 2 1 2 2
13 1 1 2 2 1 2 1
14 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
15 1 2 2 2 2 2 1
16 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
17 1 1 1 1 2 2 1
18 2 2 2 2 1 2 1
19 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
20 2 1 1 2 2 2 1
21 1 1 1 2 2 2 1
22 2 2 2 2 1 2 2
23 2 1 1 1 1 2 1
24 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
25 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
26 2 2 2 2 1 2 1
27 2 1 2 2 2 2 1
Table 6.4
Construction waste recognition under non-contributory time waste category
The breakdown of numbers of the waste elements recognised as wastes under this non-
contributory time waste category are shown in Figure 6.8. It is worthwhile to point out
that most of the respondents do not recognised Item O: (Time for workers’ resting
during construction) as construction as only 5 out of 27 respondents recognised it as
construction waste. On the opposite side, the most recognised construction waste under
this non-contributory time waste category is Item M: (Time for rework/ repair work/
defective works) which recorded a 25 positive counts out of the maximum 27.
Legend:
A: Waiting for others to complete their works before
the proceeding works can be carried out
B: Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site
C: Waiting for materials to be delivered on site
D: Waiting for the skilled workers to be on site
E: Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by
client and consultants
M: Time for rework/ repair works/ defective works
O: Time for workers’ resting during construction
Note: The values given in the table do not have
any significant meaning in this descriptive
statistic analysis, as they are values inputs for
inferential statistic analysis later in the chapter
119
Figure 6.8 Breakdown of non-contributory time waste recognition cases
The same reason as in direct conversion waste category analysis, the total counts for the
analysis of construction waste event control will calculated with less 1 missing inputs
range so it would be (7 X 26) equal to 182 total counts. All the inputs are tabulated in
Table 6.5 below and a total of 148 positive counts are recorded or approximately 81%
and it shows an increase in percentage on the waste event control for the elements tested
compared to the construction waste recognised under this category. In other words, the
respondents control non-contributory time waste more than eventually recognising
them.
21
6
18
9
19
8
23
4
18
9
25
2
5
22
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
A B C D E M O
Non Waste
Waste
120
# A B C D E M O
1 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 1 NOT CONTROL
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 CONTROL
3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 - MISSING
4 2 2 2 2 1 2 2
5 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
6 - - - - - - -
7 2 2 2 2 1 2 2
8 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
9 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
10 2 2 2 2 1 2 1
11 2 2 2 1 2 2 1
12 2 2 2 2 1 1 1
13 2 2 1 1 1 2 2
14 1 2 1 1 1 1 1
15 2 2 2 2 1 1 2
16 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
17 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
18 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
19 2 2 2 2 1 2 2
20 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
21 2 2 1 1 1 2 2
22 2 2 2 2 1 2 2
23 2 2 2 2 2 1 1
24 2 2 2 1 1 2 2
25 2 2 2 2 1 2 1
26 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
27 2 2 2 2 1 2 2
Table 6.5 Construction waste control practices under non-contributory time waste category
The breakdown of numbers of the waste elements recognised as wastes under this non-
contributory time waste category are shown in Figure 6.9. It shows that Item E:
(Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by client and consultants) is the least
controlled waste event where more than half of the respondents reported as waste event
not being controlled. Item B: (Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site) on the
other hand recorded a perfect waste control event
Legend:
A: Waiting for others to complete their works before
the proceeding works can be carried out
B: Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site
C: Waiting for materials to be delivered on site
D: Waiting for the skilled workers to be on site
E: Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by
client and consultants
M: Time for rework/ repair works/ defective works
O: Time for workers’ resting during construction
Note: The values given in the table do not have
any significant meaning in this descriptive
statistic analysis, as they are values inputs for
inferential statistic analysis later in the chapter
121
Figure 6.9 Breakdown of non-contributory time waste control practice cases
Same as direct conversion waste analysis, the cross tabbing of both Table 6.4 & 6.5 for
non-contributory waste will result in a matrix table as show in Table 6.6 below. This
matrix table can be used to explain the inter-relationship between the non-contributory
waste concepts of the respondents with their actual control practices on construction
processes. Again, 4 potential scenarios cases are to be investigated for non-contributory
time waste category.
25
11
26
01
23
3
1
21
5
1
12
14
1
22
4
1
19
7
1
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
A B C D E M O
Missing
Non Control
Control
122
# A B C D E M O
1 107 Case 1: Waste & Control
2 10 Case 2: Non Waste & Not Control
3 24 Case 3: Waste & Not Control
4 48 Case 4: Non Waste & Control
5 - Matrix not available due to missing input
6 - - - - - - -
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Table 6.6 Matrix table between waste concepts and control practices for non-contributory time wastes
From the analysis, it is found that Case 1 is the most occurrence scenario with 107 cases
(56.7%) followed by Case 4: 48 cases (24.8%), Case 3: 24 cases (13.2%) and finally
Case 2: 10 cases (5.3%). The result shows that about half of the non-contributory
construction time wastes are recognised and controlled simultaneously and again, this
results are not considered very convincing which resembles the result obtained from the
matrix table for direct conversion waste as a very high percentage of cases where wastes
were partially recognised and controlled and not recognised and controlled at all still
existed. The obvious different between direct conversion waste analysis with non-
Legend:
A: Waiting for others to complete their works before
the proceeding works can be carried out
B: Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site
C: Waiting for materials to be delivered on site
D: Waiting for the skilled workers to be on site
E: Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by
client and consultants
M: Time for rework/ repair works/ defective works
O: Time for workers’ resting during construction
123
contributory waste analysis is the percentage of occurrences for Case 3 & 4. Non-
contributory time waste analysis has a higher percentage of occurrences for Case 4 and
a relatively low percentage of occurrences for Case 3 whereby direct conversion waste
analysis has a higher percentage for Case 3 and lower for Case 4. Both Case 1 and Case
2 of the 2 analysis relative constant where Case 1 stays around 57% – 58% and Case 2
at a low 3.5% - 5%
124
6.2.2.3 Analysis on contributory time wastes
Under this category, there are only 3 wastes elements, which were asked to be identified
by the respondents based on their own experience and opinion. Those items are indexed
as P, Q & R in the section A, B and C of the questionnaires. For the total of 27
respondents by calculation as (3 X 27), it sums up a total of 81 overall counts of inputs.
For construction waste recognition, all the inputs are tabulated in Table 6.7 below and a
total of 10 positive counts are recorded or approximately 12% and this a very low
recognition on the waste concepts for the elements tested under this category compared
to analysis carried out previously on direct conversion waste and non-contributory time
waste where both categories are above 70 % - 80% of recognition.
125
Table 6. 7
Construction waste recognition under contributory time waste category
The breakdown of numbers of the waste elements recognised as wastes under this
contributory time waste category are shown in Figure 6.10. It is not surprising to see
that all the 3 items registered under contributory time wastes are recording significant
negative counts, which represent non waste recognition for the contributory time
wastes. Very much different with the first 2 waste recognition analysis, all 3 items are
recording high negative counts that above 20 counts where Item P: (Time in supervising
and inspecting the construction works) with the greatest numbers of negative counts (26
Nos.) followed by Item R: (Time for transporting workers, equipment and materials) –
P Q R
1 1 2 2 1 NON WASTE
2 1 1 1 2 WASTE
3 1 1 1
4 1 1 1
5 1 1 1
6 1 1 1
7 1 1 1
8 1 1 1
9 1 1 1
10 2 1 1
11 1 1 2
12 1 1 1
13 1 1 1
14 1 1 1
15 1 1 1
16 1 1 2
17 1 2 1
18 1 1 1
19 1 1 1
20 1 1 1
21 1 1 1
22 1 2 1
23 1 2 2
24 1 1 1
25 1 2 1
26 1 1 1
27 1 1 1
Legend:
P: Time in supervising and inspecting the
construction works
Q: Time for instructions and communication among
different tiers and trades of workers
R: Time for transporting workers, equipment and
materials
Note: The values given in the table do not have
any significant meaning in this descriptive
statistic analysis, as they are values inputs for
inferential statistic analysis later in the chapter
126
23 Nos. and Item Q: (Time for instructions and communication among different tiers
and trades of workers) – 22 Nos.
Figure 6.10
Breakdown of contributory time waste recognition cases
The total counts for the analysis of construction waste event control will calculated with
less 1 missing inputs range so it would be (3 X 26) equal to 78 total counts. All the
inputs are tabulated in Table 6.8 below and a total of 69 positive counts are recorded or
approximately 88% and it shows an tremendous increase in percentage on the waste
event control for the elements tested compared to the construction waste recognised
under this category. This vast contrast of percentages between wastes recognition and
waste event control under this category suggested that the respondents do not see
1
26
5
22
4
23
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
P Q R
Non Waste
Waste
127
contributory time wastes as a waste but in actual practices, they obvious notices the
important of controlling those events.
2P 2Q 2R
1 1 1 2 1 NOT CONTROL
2 2 2 2 2 CONTROL 3 2 2 2
4 2 2 2
5 2 2 2
6 - - -
7 2 2 2
8 2 2 2
9 2 2 2
10 1 1 1
11 2 2 2
12 2 2 2
13 2 2 2
14 2 2 2
15 2 2 2
16 2 2 2
17 2 2 2
18 2 1 2
19 2 2 2
20 2 2 2
21 2 2 2
22 1 2 2
23 2 1 2
24 2 2 2
25 2 2 2
26 1 2 2
27 2 2 2
Table 6.8
Construction waste control practices under contributory time waste category
The breakdown of numbers of the waste elements recognised as wastes under this non-
contributory time waste category are shown in Figure 6.11. It shows that all the 3 items
are having high positive counts for waste event control where all 3 items of contributory
time waste are recording above 20 Nos. of positive counts lead by Item P: (Time in
supervising and inspecting the construction works) with 25 Nos.
Legend:
P: Time in supervising and inspecting the
construction works
Q: Time for instructions and communication among
different tiers and trades of workers
R: Time for transporting workers, equipment and
materials
Note: The values given in the table do not have
any significant meaning in this descriptive
statistic analysis, as they are values inputs for
inferential statistic analysis later in the chapter
128
Figure 6.11 Breakdown of contributory time waste control practice cases
Again, by cross tabbing of both Table 6.7 & 6.8 for contributory waste will result in a
matrix table as show in Table 6.9 below. Therefore, the inter-relationship between the
contributory waste concepts of the respondents with their actual control practices on
construction processes can be explained using this matrix table. 4 potential scenarios
cases are to be investigated for contributory time waste category.
25
11
21
5
1
22
4
1
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
P Q R
Missing
Non Control
Control
129
P Q R
1 7 Case 1: Waste & Control
2 6 Case 2: Non Waste & Not Control
3 3 Case 3: Waste & Not Control
4 62 Case 4: Non Waste & Control
5 - Matrix not available due to missing input
6 - - -
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Table 6.9
Matrix table between waste concepts and control practices for contributory time wastes
From the analysis, it is found that Case 4 is the most occurrence scenario with 62 cases
(79.5%) followed by Case 1: 7 cases (9.0%), Case 2: 6 cases (7.7%) and finally Case 3:
3 cases (3.8%). The result shows that contributory time wastes has not been regarded as
construction wastes by most of the respondents. Nevertheless, in actual practices, they
seek to control those particular waste elements under contributory time wastes category,
which explained that they subconsciously acknowledged the important of controlling
those elements in their construction processes.
Legend:
P: Time in supervising and inspecting the
construction works
Q: Time for instructions and communication among
different tiers and trades of workers
R: Time for transporting workers, equipment and
materials
130
If we study the overall waste recognition, it is found that the percentage of project
management orientated personnel will have a slightly higher percentage of construction
waste recognition (72.6%) over site operative management orientated personnel
(61.7%) (Refer Figure 6.12 below)
Figure 6.12
Percentage breakdown of the wastes recognition by nature of work of the respondents
However, in certain wastes elements, site operative management personnel were
recorded higher recognition percentage compared to project management personnel for
example Item 1S: (Accidents on site), site operative management personnel were
recorded (13 out of 13) 100% recognition compared to project management personnel
only recorded (10 out of 14) 71.4% of recognition for that particular items.
193
73
150
97
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Project Management Orientated Position Site Management Orientated Position
non waste
waste
(72.6%) (61.7%)
(27.4%) (39.3%)
131
6.3 Inferential analysis results
This section will discuss about the analysis results from inferential analysis. Statistic
tools such as correlation Pearson-r and One-Way t-test will be utilised to test some
hypotheses of the study and determine the frequency ranking of each particular event or
case as rated by the respondents.
6.3.1 Correlation among direct conversion wastes concepts and perceptions, waste
event control and frequencies of waste event occurrences
There are 3 hypotheses to be tested under this direct conversion wastes category:
Hypothesis 1: There is inter-relationship between construction’s direct conversion
wastes are been perceived (D_WASTE1) with the tendency to
control those wastes (D_WASTE2)
Hypothesis 2: There is inter-relationship between construction’s direct conversion
wastes are been perceived (D_WASTE1) with the frequencies of
occurrences of such wastes during the processes (D_WASTE3)
Hypothesis 3: There is inter-relationship between the tendency to control those
construction’s direct conversion wastes (D_WASTE2) with the
frequencies of occurrences of such wastes during the processes
(D_WASTE3)
132
The purpose of these 3 hypotheses is to study whether any significant correlation
existed among waste conception, waste event control and the frequencies of wastes
events occurrences. These 3 hypotheses are to be tested together using correlation
Pearson r, and the results show that there are not significant correlations among each
other (refer Table 6.10) as the two-tail sig. value (K) is more than 0.05 for 3 cases
tested. Hence Hypothesis 1, 2 and 3 is rejected.
Hypothesis 1 Test
Variables
D_WASTE1
D_WASTE2
-.193
K = .364 >.05
Hypothesis 2 Test
Variables
D_WASTE1
D_WASTE3
-.040
K = .842 >.05
Hypothesis 3 Test
Variables
D_WASTE2
D_WASTE3
-.080
K = .698 >.05
Table 6.10 Correlation Pearson-r results summaries for hypothesis 1, 2 and 3 (Refer Appendix 1 for
Correlation Pearson-r result outputs from SPSS 10.0)
133
6.3.2 Correlation among non-contributory time wastes concepts and perceptions,
waste event control and frequencies of waste event occurrences
Same as direct conversion wastes, there are 3 hypotheses to be tested under this non-
contributory wastes category:
Hypothesis 4: There is inter-relationship between construction’s non-contributory
time wastes are been perceived (NON_CON1) with the tendency
to control those wastes (NON_CON2)
Hypothesis 5: There is inter-relationship between construction’s non-contributory
time wastes are been perceived (NON_CON1) with the
frequencies of occurrences of such wastes during the processes
(NON_CON3)
Hypothesis 6: There is inter-relationship between the tendency to control those
construction’s non-contributory time wastes (NON_CON2) with
the frequencies of occurrences of such wastes during the
processes (NON_CON3)
The purpose of these 3 hypotheses is to study whether any significant correlation
existed among waste conception, waste event control and the frequencies of wastes
events occurrences. These 3 hypotheses are to be tested together using correlation
Pearson r, and the results show that there are not significant correlations among each
134
other (refer Table 6.11) as the two-tail sig. value (K) is more than 0.05 for 3 cases
tested. Hence Hypothesis 4, 5 and 6 is rejected.
Hypothesis 4 Test
Variables
NON_CON1
NON_CON2
-.003
K = .989 >.05
Hypothesis 5 Test
Variables
NON_CON1
NON_CON3
-.291
K = .141 >.05
Hypothesis 6 Test
Variables
NON_CON2
NON_CON3
.297
K = .141 >.05
Table 6.11 Correlation Pearson-r results summaries for hypothesis 4, 5 and 6 (Refer Appendix 1 for
Correlation Pearson-r result outputs from SPSS 10.0)
135
6.3.3 Correlation among contributory time wastes concepts and perceptions, waste
event control and frequencies of waste event occurrences
Same as previous 2 wastes categories, there are 3 hypotheses to be tested under this
contributory wastes category:
Hypothesis 7: There is inter-relationship between construction’s contributory time
wastes are been perceived (CON1) with the tendency to control
those wastes (CON2)
Hypothesis 8: There is inter-relationship between construction’s contributory time
wastes are been perceived (CON1) with the frequencies of
occurrences of such wastes during the processes (CON3)
Hypothesis 9: There is inter-relationship between the tendency to control those
construction’s contributory time wastes (CON2) with the
frequencies of occurrences of such wastes during the processes
(CON3)
The purpose of these 3 hypotheses is to study whether any significant correlation
existed among waste conception, waste event control and the frequencies of wastes
events occurrences. These 3 hypotheses are to be tested together using correlation
Pearson r, and the results show that there are significant correlations between the way
contributory time wastes have been perceived (CON1) with the tendency to control
those wastes (CON2) as the 2-tail sig. value (K) signify the correlation is significant at
0.01 level or value K < 0.01 with a negative correlation (r = -.551) whereas the other 2
136
cases are tested non-significant with the 2-tail sig. value (K) is more than 0.05. (Refer
Table 6.12) Hence Hypothesis 7 is accepted and hypothesis 8 and 9 is rejected. The
case of Hypothesis 7 is true if we look back at the matrix table for contributory time
waste (Table 6.9) which also indicated that the most cases recorded among the cross
tabbing exercises proved that Case 4: Wastes not recognised but controlled is among the
most registered cases whereby in term of count inputs, it should be results in a negative
counts for wastes recognition and positive counts for wastes event control for a overall
negative correlation.
Hypothesis 7 Test
Variables
CON1
CON2
-.551**
K = .004 >.01**
Hypothesis 8 Test
Variables
CON1
CON3
-.223
K = .263 >.05
Hypothesis 9 Test
Variables
CON2
CON3
.268
K = .185 >.05
Table 6.12
Correlation Pearson-r results summaries for hypothesis 7, 8 and 9 (Refer Appendix 1 for
Correlation Pearson-r result outputs from SPSS 10.0)
137
6.3.4 Ranking on frequencies of occurrences for wastes exist in construction
processes
The purpose of this analysis is to determine the frequency of occurrences of
construction wastes as experienced by the respondents, the frequencies of occurrences
for construction wastes are analysed by using one-way t-test to determine the mean
values, standard of deviation and standard error mean and the mean of scores were
listed in descending order as shown in Table 6.13
# Construction Waste Variables N Mean Std.
Deviation
Std. Error
Mean
Waste Categories
P3 Time in supervising and inspecting the
construction works 27 4.00 .83 .16 Contributory Time
E3 Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by
client and consultants 27 3.81 .79 .15 Non-Contributory Time
Q3 Time for instructions and communication among
different tiers and trades of workers 27 3.78 .75 .14 Contributory Time
A3 Waiting for others to complete their works before
the proceeding works can be carried out 27 3.67 .73 .14 Non-Contributory Time
M3 Time for rework/ repair works/ defective works 27 3.37 .69 .13 Non-Contributory Time
N3 Materials for rework/ repair works/ defective
works 27 3.33 .73 .14 Direct Conversion
C3 Waiting for materials to be delivered on site 27 3.30 .95 .18 Non-Contributory Time
R3 Time for transporting workers, equipment and
materials 27 3.26 .94 .18 Contributory Time
B3 Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site 27 3.15 .86 .17 Non-Contributory Time
K3 Material deterioration/ damaged during
construction periods 27 3.11 .89 .17 Direct Conversion
J3 Material loss/ stolen from site during
construction periods 27 3.07 .83 .16 Direct Conversion
L3 Mishandling or error in construction applications/
installation 27 3.04 .90 .17 Direct Conversion
I3 Unnecessary procedures and working protocols 27 3.00 .96 .18 Direct Conversion
O3 Time for workers’ resting during construction 27 2.96 .85 .16 Non-Contributory Time
G3 Over-allocation/ unnecessary materials on site 27 2.93 .83 .16 Direct Conversion
D3 Waiting for the skilled workers to be on site 27 2.67 .92 .18 Non-Contributory Time
S3 Accidents on site 27 2.52 .70 .13 Direct Conversion
F3 Over-allocation/ unnecessary equipment on site 27 2.44 .85 .16 Direct Conversion
H3 Over-allocation/ unnecessary workers on site 27 2.41 .84 .16 Direct Conversion
Table 6.13 Construction waste variables ranking (Refer Appendix 2 for t-test results output from SPSS
10.0)
138
From the mean ranking results, it shows that time wastes categories regardless of
contributory time or non-contributory time wastes occurred at the top of the list
compared to direct conversion wastes. Therefore, it is recommended that for
construction processes improvements, it is eventually those contributory and non-
contributory times waste variables that have to be given more attentions and in real fact,
most of them are related to process flows and sequences and this can lead to lean
construction’s tools and methods which are developed mostly to tackle those wastes
resulted from process flow inefficiencies.
139
6.3.5 Ranking on likeliness for sources/ causes for the construction wastes
The purpose of this analysis is to determine the respondent’s recognition of particular
sources/ causes factors that cause construction wastes. Same as ranking for the
frequencies of wastes occurrences, the rating on these likelihood of waste sources/
causes factors as rated by the respondents are analysed by using one-way t-test and the
mean of scores were listed in descending order as shown in Table 6.14
# Sources/ Causes for Construction Wastes N Mean Std.
Deviation
Std. Error
Mean
Sources/ Causes Factors
Categories
E2 Late information and decision making 27 3.63 .56 .11 Information and
Communication Factors
D2 Poorly scheduled delivery of material to site 27 3.37 .63 .12 Material Factors
A1 Poor coordination among project participants 27 3.37 .63 .12 Management &
Administration Factors
E3 Unclear information 27 3.26 .53 .10 Information and
Communication Factors
A2 Poor planning and scheduling 27 3.26 .59 .11 Management &
Administration Factors
D3 Poor quality of material 27 3.26 .71 .14 Material Factors
A3 Lack of control 26 3.23 .59 .12 Management &
Administration Factors
D1 Delay of material delivery 27 3.22 .70 .13 Material Factors
E1 Defective or Wrong information 27 3.15 .53 .10 Information and
Communication Factors
B2 Inexperience inspectors 27 3.11 .51 9.75E-02 People Factors
D4 Poor equipment choice or ineffective equipment 27 3.11 .80 .15 Material Factors
D6 Poor site documentation 27 3.07 .68 .13 Material Factors
B3 Too few supervisors/ foreman 27 3.04 .59 .11 People Factors
B5 Supervision too late 27 2.96 .71 .14 People Factors
B4 Uncontrolled sub-contracting practices 27 2.93 .62 .12 People Factors
B1 Lack of trades skills 27 2.93 .62 .12 People Factors
C3 Equipment shortage 27 2.93 .62 .12 Execution Factors
D5 Poor storage of material 27 2.93 .73 .14 Material Factors
C6 Poor site documentation 27 2.89 .58 .11 Execution Factors
C5 Poor site layout and setting out 27 2.85 .66 .13 Execution Factors
C4 Poor equipment choice or ineffective equipment 27 2.81 .56 .11 Execution Factors
A4 Bureaucracy 27 2.78 .58 .11 Management &
Administration Factors
B6 Poor labour distribution 27 2.70 .67 .13 People Factors
C1 Inappropriate construction methods 27 2.67 .73 .14 Execution Factors
C2 Outdated equipment 27 2.52 .80 .15 Execution Factors
Table 6.14
Sources/ causes of construction waste ranking (Refer Appendix 2 for t-tests results
output from SPSS 10.0)
140
As from the mean ranking result shows that Item E2: (Late information and decision
making) is highly regarded as the main contributory sources or causes to the
construction wastes with the highest mean value (3.63) and with a 0.26 from the second
rank item D2: (Poorly scheduled delivery of material to site)
Among the clusters of cause factors observed from Table 6.14, there are 3 categories of
waste sources/ causes factors are widely acknowledged as the key contributory factors
to construction wastes. Those categories included Information and Communication
Factors, Management and Administration Factors and Material Factors as most of the
Cause factors captured under these 3 categories are rated with the mean value over 3.
Overall, the likelihood of recognising the items above as the sources/ causes of wastes
that will impact on the productivity of the projects, are still reasonably high as most of
the mean value for the items tested were clustering around the scale “3” value
representing “likely as a sources/ causes of wastes”. However, there are also some
exceptions such as Item C1: (Inappropriate construction methods) and Item C2:
(Outdated equipment) both recorded a slightly low mean values of 2.67 and 2.52
respectively.
141
6.4 Causes and Effects Matrix
The purpose of this analysis to relate the particular sources or causes to the construction
wastes and this is to give us a better picture of what leads to the waste in construction
processes as suggested by the respondents feedback on this research. Figure 6.13 is the
overall analysis on Causes and Effects Matrix of the “Major cause” to the construction
wastes based on 5 main causes factors while Figure 6.14 is the Causes and Effects
Matrix of the “Other causes” to the construction wastes. (Refer overall Causes and
Effects Matrix tables in Appendix 4 for a detailed understanding on actual one to one
relationship between wastes causes to wastes itself as per the data gather from the
respondents of this research)
142
Figure 6.13
Causes and Effects relationship for the cases of major causes (Categorised)
0 5 10 15 20 25
Nos. of major cause related
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
Ty
pe
of
Co
ns
tru
cti
on
Wa
ste
sManagement & Administration
Factors
People Factors
Execution Factors
Materials Factors
Information & Communication
Factors
Not relevant
Legend:
A: Waiting for others to complete their works before
the proceeding works can be carried out
B: Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site
C: Waiting for materials to be delivered on site
D: Waiting for the skilled workers to be on site
E: Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by
client/ consultants
F: Over-allocation/ unnecessary equipment on site
G: Over-allocation/ unnecessary materials on site
H: Over-allocation/ unnecessary workers on site
I: Unnecessary procedures and working protocols
J: Material loss/ stolen from site during construction
periods
K: Material deterioration/ damaged during
construction periods
L: Mishandling or error in construction applications/
installation
M: Rework/ repair works/ defective works
N: Workers’ resting during construction
O: Supervising and inspecting the construction works
P: Instructions and communication among different
tiers and trades of workers
Q: Transporting workers, equipment and materials
R: Accidents on site
143
Figure 6.14
Causes and Effects relationship for the cases of others causes (Categorised)
The matrix table provides a clearer insight into the types of causes factors that directly
related construction wastes, as we shall see that in Figure 6.13, Management and
Administration Factors has a relatively high counts numbers in causing the construction
wastes items ranging from Item A to Item I and Item Q, Materials Factors dominants
over Item J & K and People Factors score higher in Item M, N and O. By conducting
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Nos. of other causes related
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
Typ
es o
f co
nstr
ucti
on
waste
s
Management & Administration
Factors
People Factors
Execution Factors
Materials Factors
Information & Communication
Factors
Not relevant
Legend:
A: Waiting for others to complete their works before
the proceeding works can be carried out
B: Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site
C: Waiting for materials to be delivered on site
D: Waiting for the skilled workers to be on site
E: Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by
client/ consultants
F: Over-allocation/ unnecessary equipment on site
G: Over-allocation/ unnecessary materials on site
H: Over-allocation/ unnecessary workers on site
I: Unnecessary procedures and working protocols
J: Material loss/ stolen from site during construction
periods
K: Material deterioration/ damaged during
construction periods
L: Mishandling or error in construction applications/
installation
M: Rework/ repair works/ defective works
N: Workers’ resting during construction
O: Supervising and inspecting the construction works
P: Instructions and communication among different
tiers and trades of workers
Q: Transporting workers, equipment and materials
R: Accidents on site
144
this causes and effects matrix exercise, we can know that each types of construction
wastes has a different roots causes to the problems and it is important to identify those
particular causes to the problems in order to a proper corrective or preventive actions
can be carried to ensure continuous improvement in performance of construction
activities.
145
CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
7.1 Introduction
This chapter concludes the whole study based on the findings. The tested
hypotheses will be related to the research objectives and further interpreted and
conclusion on the achievement of the research objectives will be drawn. Some
recommendations will also be drawn from the findings and the limitations during
the research period will also be highlighted
7.2 Discussions of the findings of the research
The discussion on the findings of the research will be carried in 2 separate ways:
1. Relating the research findings to research objectives
2. Rewritten hypotheses and interpret the results
7.2.1 Relating the research findings to research objectives
1. Research objective 1: General perceptions on construction wastes based on
lean construction principles
146
From the research results, it is found that the general perceptions and lean
concepts of local construction personnel particularly on construction
wastes and their tendency to control these wastes are at an acceptable
level. The local construction site personnel can identified most wastes as
outlined and the tendency of controlling those wastes is even higher than
recognising the wastes themselves. However, from the results, it also
shows that the recognition over flow related construction wastes is rather
low compared to direct conversion wastes or physical wastes especially
those related to contributory time wastes. This signify that the local
construction personnel are still not fully comprehend the concepts of flows
and non value-adding activities and tends to included these contributory
work as part and parcel of conversion process.
In fact, lean construction philosophy sees these contributory works as not
adding any values to the client even though they are sometimes necessary
for the progress of the overall construction processes. On the bright side,
the research results also show a very high percentage on those contributory
works as being controlled during the construction processes signaling that
those contributory time wastes are actually well aware off those activities
even though they being not recognised as construction wastes.
Besides that, it is also found that there are different levels of waste
recognition between project management orientated personnel and the site
147
operative management orientated personnel. Project managerial personnel
recorded higher overall waste recognition compared to site operative
managerial personnel suggesting that they are more sensitive to overall
construction wastes issues and those related to process flows, whereas site
operative managerial personnel are found more concentrated for
conversion wastes where the percentage of recognising some conversion
wastes are higher than the project managerial personnel.
2. Research Objective 2: Degree of problems arisen of the wastes identified
Based on the ranking of the event occurrences frequencies for waste events
existed in construction processes shows that the most frequent waste
events occurred in construction activities are actually flow related with
both contributory time wastes and non-contributory time wastes were at
the top of the ranking list. On the other hand, many direct conversion
wastes are recorded rather low scores mostly in the range of “Seldom” and
“Very Rare” occurrence events.
Eventually by breaking down the waste categories, it is made clear that the
flow time wastes are the prominent events that occurred in construction
processes. Therefore, based on that information, a better performance
improvement strategies can be arranged to target at those flow related
wastes events, as those events are usually invisible or ignored by
148
conventional construction management. The construction processes can be
further streamlined by reducing or eliminating those flow waste elements
by implementing the lean construction principles and practices such as
employee involvements, kanzan, JIT concepts etc at all level of
construction processes.
3. Research Objective 3 & 4: Waste cause and effect relationship and
potential improvement strategies
In this research, major sources of wastes are also been identified directly
related to the respective construction wastes from the wastes causes and
effects matrix as shown in Appendix 4. From the aggregated results shows
that management and administrative factors are recognised as the dominant
sources of wastes for most of the cases while material factors and people
factors are more dominant for a few wastes types. If compared to the
ranking of the likelihood for waste factors to impact the construction
productivity in general, information and communications factors which are
hardly seen as a dominant factor of any construction wastes types at the
top of the ranking list follow tightly by management and administrative
factors. On the low side, the executive factors and people factors scored
relatively low in the ranking.
149
This is a very good exercise to point out the causes and effects relationship
between the sources of waste and waste itself for processes control,
reengineering or redesign by targeting directly at the respective sources of
wastes for processes improvement. In most leaner construction
organisition, they usually practise this exercise in a survey called waste
identification survey (WIS) through work sampling practices in order to
monitor and improve their flow performance from time to time during their
construction activities.
7.2.2 Rewritten hypotheses and interpret the results
From inferential statistical analyses in chapter 6, 9 hypotheses testing were
conducted with Pearson-r correlation. The results from the analyses had concluded
following hypotheses as:
For direct conversion wastes inter-relationship testing
1. There is no significant inter-relationship between construction’s direct
conversion wastes perceived with the tendency to control those wastes.
2. There is no significant inter-relationship between construction’s direct
conversion wastes perceived with the frequencies of occurrences of such
wastes during construction.
150
3. There is no significant inter-relationship between the tendency to control
direct conversion wastes with the frequencies of occurrences of such
wastes during construction.
For non-contributory time wastes inter-relationship testing
4. There is no significant inter-relationship between construction’s non-
contributory time wastes perceived with the tendency to control those
wastes.
5. There is no significant inter-relationship between construction’s non-
contributory time wastes perceived with the frequencies of occurrences of
such wastes during construction.
6. There is no significant inter-relationship between the tendency to control
non-contributory time wastes with the frequencies of occurrences of such
wastes during construction.
For contributory time wastes inter-relationship testing
7. There is no significant inter-relationship between construction’s
contributory time wastes perceived with the tendency to control those
wastes.
8. There is no significant inter-relationship between construction’s
contributory time wastes perceived with the frequencies of occurrences of
such wastes during construction.
151
9. There is significant inter-relationship between the tendency to control
contributory time wastes with the frequencies of occurrences of such
wastes during construction.
The non-significant over almost all the hypotheses tested (except contributory
time wastes recognition and control recorded a negative significant score or -.551)
in correlation testing shows that there were not uniformity in the way the
construction waste are recognised and controlled even with the high recognition
and control rates. Recognising particular construction wastes or frequencies of
occurrence of construction wastes on site by the construction personnel do not
prompt them to control them and vice versa, recognizing construction wastes are
not prompt by the frequencies of occurrence of those wastes during construction
site. The construction wastes are treated very subjectively from cases to cases and
suggested that no proper doctrine or philosophy in supporting for particular waste
recognition and control mechanism.
In the importance of continuous process and productivity improvement, having the
correct concepts and understanding and having the right attitudes to mitigate and
control the flow and flow related wastes are very essence. In this case, the worst
scenario would be someone actually not knowing what is the waste and therefore
not put in any efforts to control it and letting the wastes to repeat from time to
time. There might be some other reasons for not recognising wastes and not
controlling them. Some would not treat it as a waste as those wastes are
152
recoverable due to defaults by others and some misunderstanding that wastes are
necessary to avoid others bigger wastes from happening. For example, as cited
from the only 1 qualitative inputs from all 27 questionnaires received stated that
waiting for clarification and confirmation by client and consultants is not a waste
because he/ she believed that it is important to wait for clarification and
confirmation “because lack of this will be more wastage (redo the task)”. From
the results of cross-tab matrix tables shows a relatively low percentage of that
particular scenario (less than 7%) and that should be a good sign for the local
construction industries.
However, for the scenarios of knowing the wastes but not controlling them hit a
rather high numbers of cases and percentage especially in direct conversion
wastes. This is particularly not a good sign where those wastes are left behind the
construction processes and hinder the full potential of process improvement. The
results to this might be abundant. One of the reason would be the costs to control
or improve the wastes might be higher that the cost of the wastes itself. Besides
that, the reasons of not control the wastes even the wastes are identified and
recognised perhaps is due to not sufficient tools and knowledge to control them
and some might due to misunderstanding during execution and not well trained
personnel.
153
7.3 Limitations of the research
One of the limitations to this research is the design of the research by trying to
discuss lean construction philosophy in a general perceptive of construction
processes, which restricted to site construction processes only. In the real essences
of lean construction, lean construction principles are universal and can be applied
in all aspects of construction processes flow improvement from the very start of
the projects until the very end of project execution and delivery. In that context,
the overall process flow improvement can include design management, supply
chain management, sub-contracting management etc and not just restricted to
wastes of the area of this study.
In that bigger extent of interpretation on lean construction, the potential
productivity improvement is even greater but it required a higher degree of
commitment and leadership while this research is only focusing one main concept
of flow as suggested by lean construction and studies the related perceptions and
actual control practices on flow related wastes as well as the potential
improvement available based on the findings of the research.
The other limitations to this study is the lack of qualitative data on this research,
those qualitative data can be useful in answering certain reasons behind of
particular understanding, attitudes and actions by the respondents. In this research,
only one qualitative data are provided among all respondents although in the
154
questionnaire has prepared column for the respondents to express their views and
opinions.
7.4 Challenges in Implementing Lean Construction
There have been many general principles of lean construction highlighted in the
previous chapters. The principles cited relate to three broad areas: improving the
activity or task (workstation) operation, optimising the overall process, and
learning from external facilities and organisations (benchmarking). Different
principles apply at each level, and the concepts upon which these principles are
based may also differ. For example, at the total process level, construction can be
viewed as a series of sequential operations whereas at the activity and subtask
levels, the work is largely composed of concurrent operations. Also, at the total
process level, analyses of the work tend to be process oriented. At the activity
level, analyses are more product-oriented.
Due to the diffusing concepts and principles of lean construction, Implementing it
into the existing processes will somehow turn out to be more difficult especially
this implementation is something which has to deal with mindset and culture
changes. Therefore, it is outlined with a few key challenges that need to be
seriously looked into in order to successfully adopt and implement the new
philosophy of lean construction into the conventional practices.
155
1. Management commitment
Leadership is needed to realise a fundamental shift of philosophy, with the
goal of improving every activity in the organisation. Without an active
initiative from the management, change will stop at all natural barriers.
Management must understand and internalise the new philosophy. The change
will be realised only through people; it cannot be delegated to staff specialists,
like in the case of investment into new technology. Management must create
an environment, which is conducive to change.
2. Focus on measurable and actionable improvement
The focus should be on actionable and measurable improvement, rather than
just on developing capabilities. Of course, defining various flow processes and
focusing on their bottlenecks to speed up and smooth out material and
information flows means just that. Short-term successes then reinforce
motivation for further improvement.
Originally in JIT, the overarching goal was to reduce or eliminate inventories.
However, reduction of inventories uncovered other problems, which had to be
solved as a forced response. Cycle time, space and variability have also been
used as drivers, because they too are increased by underlying problems.
Especially cycle time provides an excellent, easy to understand driver, which
can be improved continually.
156
3. Involvement
Employee involvement happens naturally, when organisational hierarchies are
dismantled, and the new organisation is formed with self-directed teams,
responsible for control and improvement of their process. But also even if the
hierarchy remains intact, involvement can be stimulated through problem
solving teams. Employee involvement is thus necessary, but not sufficient for
realising the full potential of continuous improvement.
4. Learning
Implementation requires a substantial amount of learning. First, learning
should be directed at principles, tools and techniques of process improvement.
In the next phase, the focus turns to empirical
xi
REFERENCE
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causes and prevention.” In Journel of Construction Engineering and
Management, July/ August, pp. 317
xii
Formosa, Carlos T et al (1999) “Method of waste control in the building industry.” In
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1, 1999, pp. 48
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Plossl, George W., (1991) “Managing in the new world of manufacturing”, Prentice-
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pg.369
Taylor, T.W., (1913) “The principles of scientific management”, Harper and Brothers,
New York quoted in Formosa, Carlos T et al (2002) “Material waste in building
industry: main causes and prevention.” In Journel of Construction Engineering
and Management, July/ August, pp. 317
xiii
Serpell, Alfredo, Venturi, Adriano & Contreras, Jeanette. (1995). “Characterization of
waste in building construction projects.” In Lean Construction, Alarcón (ed.),
A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1997.
Womack, J and Jones, D. (1996). Lean Thinking. Simon & Schuster
Wright, Gordon (2000). “Lean construction boosts productivity” in Building Design &
Construction, 41(12), pp.29-32
xiv
APPENDIX 1:
CORRELATION PEARSON R RESULTS FROM SPSS 10.0
Correlations
D_WASTE1 D_WASTE2 D_WASTE3
D_WASTE1 Pearson Correlation 1.000 -.193 -.040
Sig. (2-tailed) . .346 .842
N 27 26 27
D_WASTE2 Pearson Correlation -.193 1.000 -.080
Sig. (2-tailed) .346 . .698
N 26 26 26
D_WASTE3 Pearson Correlation -.040 -.080 1.000
Sig. (2-tailed) .842 .698 .
N 27 26 27
Correlations
NON_CON1 NON_CON2 NON_CON3
NON_CON1 Pearson Correlation 1.000 -.003 -.291
Sig. (2-tailed) . .989 .141
N 27 26 27
NON_CON2 Pearson Correlation -.003 1.000 .297
Sig. (2-tailed) .989 . .141
N 26 26 26
NON_CON3 Pearson Correlation -.291 .297 1.000
Sig. (2-tailed) .141 .141 .
N 27 26 27
Correlations
CON1 CON2 CON3
CON1 Pearson Correlation 1.000 -.551** -.223
Sig. (2-tailed) . .004 .263
N 27 26 27
CON2 Pearson Correlation -.551** 1.000 .268
Sig. (2-tailed) .004 . .185
N 26 26 26
CON3 Pearson Correlation -.223 .268 1.000
Sig. (2-tailed) .263 .185 .
N 27 26 27
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
xv
APPENDIX 2
ONE-WAY T-TEST RESULTS FROM SPSS 10.0
One-Sample Statistics
N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error
Mean
A3 27 3.67 .73 .14
B3 27 3.15 .86 .17
C3 27 3.30 .95 .18
D3 27 2.67 .92 .18
E3 27 3.81 .79 .15
F3 27 2.44 .85 .16
G3 27 2.93 .83 .16
H3 27 2.41 .84 .16
I3 27 3.00 .96 .18
J3 27 3.07 .83 .16
K3 27 3.11 .89 .17
L3 27 3.04 .90 .17
M3 27 3.37 .69 .13
N3 27 3.33 .73 .14
O3 27 2.96 .85 .16
P3 27 4.00 .83 .16
Q3 27 3.78 .75 .14
R3 27 3.26 .94 .18
S3 27 2.52 .70 .13
One-Sample Statistics
N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error
Mean
A4_1 27 3.37 .63 .12
A4_2 27 3.26 .59 .11
A4_3 26 3.23 .59 .12
A4_4 27 2.78 .58 .11
B4_1 27 2.93 .62 .12
B4_2 27 3.11 .51 9.75E-02
B4_3 27 3.04 .59 .11
B4_4 27 2.93 .62 .12
B4_5 27 2.96 .71 .14
B4_6 27 2.70 .67 .13
C4_1 27 2.67 .73 .14
C4_2 27 2.52 .80 .15
C4_3 27 2.93 .62 .12
C4_4 27 2.81 .56 .11
C4_5 27 2.85 .66 .13
C4_6 27 2.89 .58 .11
D4_1 27 3.22 .70 .13
D4_2 27 3.37 .63 .12
D4_3 27 3.26 .71 .14
D4_4 27 3.11 .80 .15
D4_5 27 2.93 .73 .14
D4_6 27 3.07 .68 .13
E4_1 27 3.15 .53 .10
E4_2 27 3.63 .56 .11
E4_3 27 3.26 .53 .10
xvi
APPENDIX 3
SPSS DATA INPUT SHEETS
(RESPONDENT’S INFO)
POSITION P_TYPE CIDB CLIENT
1 4 2 2
1 4 2 2
2 3 2 1
1 1 2 1
2 5 2 2
1 2 2 1
1 4 1 2
2 4 2 2
2 2 - 1
2 3 2 1
1 2 1 1
2 4 - 2
1 3 2 1
1 5 2 2
1 2 2 1
1 3 2 1
2 2 2 1
1 2 2 2
2 1 2 1
2 3 2 1
1 3 2 1
2 4 2 2
2 2 1 1
1 5 2 2
1 4 2 2
2 4 2 2
2 1 2 1
xvii
APPENDIX 3
SPSS DATA INPUT SHEETS (CONT’D)
(WASTE CONCEPTS)
A1 B1 C1 D1 E1 F1 G1 H1 I1 J1 K1 L1 M1 N1 O1 P1 Q1 R1 S1
1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
2 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2
2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2
2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2
1 1 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2
1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 1 2
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
2 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
2 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 2
2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 1 1
2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
2 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2
xviii
APPENDIX 3
SPSS DATA INPUT SHEETS (CONT’D)
(WASTE CONTROL EVENTS)
A2 B2 C2 D2 E2 F2 G2 H2 I2 J2 K2 L2 M2 N2 O2 P2 Q2 R2 S2
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 1 2 2 2 1
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 2
2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 2
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1
2 2 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 1
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 1
2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
xix
APPENDIX 3
SPSS DATA INPUT SHEETS (CONT’D)
(FREQUENCIES OF OCCURRENCES)
A3 B3 C3 D3 E3 F3 G3 H3 I3 J3 K3 L3 M3 N3 O3 P3 Q3 R3 S3
3 3 3 2 5 4 4 4 4 3 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 4
3 3 2 2 4 3 3 2 4 2 2 3 4 4 3 5 4 3 2
3 3 4 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 2
4 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 4 3 5 4 3 3
4 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 3 3 2 3 3 4 2
4 4 4 3 3 3 4 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 3 3
3 1 2 1 4 1 2 2 2 4 4 5 4 3 2 5 5 2 3
2 2 2 1 2 3 3 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 4 4 2 1
4 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 3 3 2 3 3 3 4 3 3 2
3 4 2 3 4 3 4 3 2 4 3 3 3 4 2 4 3 3 3
5 4 5 3 3 3 3 2 4 3 4 3 4 2 2 3 4 3 3
5 3 3 4 4 3 3 1 3 2 2 2 3 3 3 5 5 4 2
3 3 4 4 4 3 3 2 3 3 3 2 3 2 3 3 3 3 3
4 2 3 2 5 2 4 2 4 3 5 5 5 5 3 2 2 4 3
4 4 4 3 5 3 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 5 5 4 5 3
4 5 5 4 4 1 2 2 3 3 3 2 3 3 4 5 5 5 2
3 3 2 2 3 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 4 4 3 4 4 1 2
4 4 4 2 4 1 2 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 4 3 4 3
4 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 3 4 4 3 4 4 3 3
3 4 4 4 5 2 2 3 5 3 3 3 4 4 3 5 4 3 3
4 4 4 4 4 3 4 2 4 3 3 3 3 4 2 4 3 4 3
4 3 2 1 3 1 3 2 2 3 3 3 2 3 3 4 4 4 1
3 4 5 3 4 3 2 2 2 4 3 4 4 3 4 3 4 4 2
4 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 1 2 3 3 4 4 3 3 3
4 2 3 2 5 3 2 2 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 3 4 3 2
3 3 3 2 4 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 3 3 3 4 4 2 2
5 3 3 3 4 2 4 3 3 4 4 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 3
xx
APPENDIX 3
SPSS DATA INPUT SHEETS (CONT’D)
(SCORE AGGREGRATION)
D_WASTE1 D_WASTE2 D_WASTE3 NON_CON1 NON_CON2 NON_CON3 CON1 CON2 CON3
18.00 15.00 26.00 11.00 13.00 23.00 5.00 4.00 8.00
17.00 15.00 33.00 13.00 14.00 24.00 3.00 6.00 12.00
17.00 16.00 29.00 9.00 14.00 21.00 3.00 6.00 12.00
18.00 16.00 24.00 11.00 13.00 24.00 3.00 6.00 12.00
14.00 15.00 16.00 13.00 14.00 20.00 3.00 6.00 10.00
18.00 - 28.00 13.00 - 27.00 3.00 - 13.00
17.00 14.00 29.00 12.00 13.00 25.00 3.00 6.00 12.00
12.00 18.00 25.00 12.00 14.00 27.00 3.00 6.00 10.00
15.00 18.00 30.00 13.00 14.00 24.00 3.00 6.00 10.00
12.00 13.00 34.00 9.00 12.00 22.00 4.00 3.00 10.00
18.00 13.00 25.00 13.00 12.00 21.00 4.00 6.00 10.00
17.00 16.00 23.00 13.00 11.00 22.00 3.00 6.00 14.00
16.00 16.00 32.00 10.00 11.00 27.00 3.00 6.00 9.00
18.00 10.00 26.00 13.00 8.00 17.00 3.00 6.00 8.00
16.00 16.00 17.00 12.00 12.00 13.00 3.00 6.00 14.00
18.00 17.00 21.00 14.00 14.00 22.00 4.00 6.00 15.00
18.00 18.00 27.00 9.00 14.00 26.00 4.00 6.00 9.00
18.00 15.00 21.00 12.00 13.00 25.00 3.00 5.00 11.00
16.00 17.00 33.00 13.00 13.00 24.00 3.00 6.00 11.00
18.00 16.00 30.00 11.00 14.00 29.00 3.00 6.00 12.00
16.00 17.00 21.00 10.00 11.00 29.00 3.00 6.00 11.00
16.00 18.00 22.00 13.00 13.00 23.00 4.00 5.00 12.00
18.00 12.00 31.00 9.00 12.00 23.00 5.00 5.00 11.00
17.00 13.00 21.00 13.00 12.00 18.00 3.00 6.00 10.00
17.00 15.00 21.00 13.00 12.00 21.00 4.00 6.00 10.00
15.00 15.00 25.00 12.00 14.00 21.00 3.00 5.00 10.00
17.00 18.00 28.00 12.00 13.00 21.00 3.00 6.00 12.00
xxi
APPENDIX 3
SPSS DATA INPUT SHEETS (CONT’D)
(WASTE SOURCES/ CAUSES)
A4_1 A4_2 A4_3 A4_4 B4_1 B4_2 B4_3 B4_4 B4_5 B4_6 C4_1 C4_2 C4_3 C4_4 C4_5 C4_6 D4_1 D4_2 D4_3 D4_4 D4_5 D4_6 E4_1 E4_2 E4_3
4 4 4 3 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 3 3 4 4 4 3 3 2 3
3 4 4 2 2 3 2 2 2 3 3 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 3 2 4 3
3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 3 3 2 2 4 3 2 2 2 2 3 3 3
4 3 3 2 3 4 3 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 2 3 2 2 3 2 3 2 3 4 3
3 3 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 2 2 4 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 2 1 2 2 4 4
2 2 2 2 3 3 2 3 3 2 2 3 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 3 3 3
3 4 3 2 2 3 3 2 3 3 2 2 3 3 2 2 3 3 2 4 2 2 3 3 3
4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 1 1 3 2 4 3 4 4 3 4 4 4 3 4 4
3 3 3 3 3 3 4 3 3 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 3
3 3 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
4 4 - 4 4 4 3 4 2 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
4 4 4 3 4 3 3 4 4 3 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 4 3 3 3 3 4 4 3
3 3 3 4 3 4 4 3 3 2 3 2 3 2 3 3 3 4 4 3 3 3 4 4 4
4 4 4 3 3 4 4 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 4 4 4 3 4 4 4 4
4 3 3 3 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 3 3 3 4 3
4 4 4 3 3 3 3 4 4 3 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3
2 2 4 2 2 3 3 3 3 2 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 2
4 3 3 3 3 2 2 3 2 3 2 3 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 3 3 4 3 4 4
4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 3 4 3 3 4 4 3 3 4 3 4 3
3 3 4 2 3 3 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 3
4 4 4 3 4 4 3 3 4 3 4 3 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 3 3 3 4 4
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 2 2 3 3 4 3
3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 3 2 2 4 3 3 2 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 4
3 3 3 2 2 3 3 3 2 3 2 2 2 3 3 2 4 3 3 4 2 2 3 4 3
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 3 1 3 3 3 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
4 3 3 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 2 1 3 2 2 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 3
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 3 2 3 3 3 3 2 3 2 2 3 3 3 3 3
xxii
APPENDIX 4
CAUSES AND EFFECTS MATRIX TABLES
MAJOR CAUSE
A1 A2 A3 A4 B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 E1 E2 E3 F
A 8 7 5 2
B 12 3 1 3 1 2
C 8 3 1 4 5 1
D 1 5 5 5 1 1 1 2 1
E 8 3 2 1 7 1
F 5 5 3 2 2 1
G 10 4 2 3 1 1
H 9 5 7
I 4 6 4 4 2
J 1 1 1 1 1 1 11 3 1
K 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 9 3
L 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 1 4
M 1 1 5 3 3 2 2 1 2
N 1 1 4 2 1 7 5
O 1 9 6 1 4
P 4 2 3 1 5 1 1 1 3
Q 3 7 1 1 4 1 1 3
R 3 1 5 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 2
xxiii
APPENDIX 4
CAUSES AND EFFECTS MATRIX TABLES (CONT’D)
OTHER CAUSES
A1 A2 A3 A4 B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 E1 E2 E3 F
A 3 5 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 3 1
B 4 1 2 1 1 3 1 3 3 1 1 1 1
C 5 2 2 1 1 2 5 2 1 4 1 1
D 5 3 3 1 1 2 4 1
E 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 2 5 6
F 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
G 2 1 1 2 4 1 2 1 1 1
H 3 1 1 1 1 5 1 1
I 1 1 1 2 2 1 1
J 1 2 1 1 3 3
K 1 2 3 1 2 2 1 3 3
L 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 3 1 2
M 1 3 3 1 3 1 1 1 3 4 1 1
N 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1
O 1 2 1 2 3 1 1 1
P 1 2 1 1 1 2 1
Q 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
R 3 1 2 1 2 3 2 1 1 1 1
xxiv
APPENDIX 5
SAMPLE OF QUESTIONNAIRE
Construction Wastes Study Based on Lean Construction
This study is focused on the study of wastes concepts based on Lean Construction Philosophy in
local construction industry. The questionnaire will consist of 4 sections, which intend to study:
1) The general perception and acceptance of Lean Construction philosophy and the
waste concepts by local construction industry
2) The extent of waste problems in existing local industry
3) The relevant sources of wastes to have significant impacts on project
4) And finally to create correlation matrix between wastes and the sources of wastes
Background Information
A. Please indicate your position in the project organisation
Position
q Project Manager
q Resident Engineer
q Site Engineer
q Site Supervisor
q Project Scheduler/ Planner
q Foreman
q Other (Please specify):
______________________
B. Please select the most appropriate type of construction project to describe the area of projects
most frequently involved by your company:
q High rise building
q Residential & commercial scheme
q Industrial projects
q Public & community buildings
q Civil & road construction
q Others ( Please specify):
_____________________
C. Please indicate the CIDB registration grade:
q Below Grade 3
q Grade 3 and above
D. Please select the most project clients related to the projects carried out:
q Private
q Public
xv
Section A: General Perception
1. To your experience and opinion, which are the following items or activities can be
best represented or described as “Waste” or “Non Value Added” to Construction site:
(Please indicate X in the Waste column for waste activities and Non-Waste column for
non-waste activities)
Waste Non-Waste
A. Waiting for others to complete their works before
the proceeding works can be carried out
B. Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site
C. Waiting for materials to be delivered on site
D. Waiting for the skilled workers to be on site
E. Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by
client and consultants
F. Over-allocation/ unnecessary equipment on site
G. Over-allocation/ unnecessary materials on site
H. Over-allocation/ unnecessary workers on site
I. Unnecessary procedures and working protocols
J. Material loss/ stolen from site during construction
periods
K. Material deterioration/ damaged during construction
periods
L. Mishandling or error in construction applications/
installation
M. Time for rework/ repair works/ defective works
N. Materials for rework/ repair works/ defective works
O. Time for workers’ resting during construction
P. Time in supervising and inspecting the construction
works
Q. Time for instructions and communication among
different tiers and trades of workers
R. Time for transporting workers, equipment and
materials
S. Accidents on site
xvi
Section B: Existing Scenario and Practice in The Local Industry
2. To your experience in your work field, is any of the following events are properly
controlling and mitigated in the construction site.
(Please indicate X in the Yes column for controlled events and No column for
uncontrolled events)
Yes No
A. Waiting for others to complete their works before
the proceeding works can be carried out
B. Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site
C. Waiting for materials to be delivered on site
D. Waiting for the skilled workers to be on site
E. Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by
client and consultants
F. Over-allocation/ unnecessary equipment on site
G. Over-allocation/ unnecessary materials on site
H. Over-allocation/ unnecessary workers on site
I. Unnecessary procedures and working protocols
J. Material loss/ stolen from site during construction
periods
K. Material deterioration/ damaged during construction
periods
L. Mishandling or error in construction applications/
installation
M. Time for rework/ repair works/ defective works
N. Materials for rework/ repair works/ defective works
O. Time for workers’ resting during construction
P. Time in supervising and inspecting the construction
works
Q. Time for instructions and communication among
different tiers and trades of workers
R. Time for transporting workers, equipment and
materials
S. Accidents on site
xvii
3. To your experience in your work field, what is the frequency of occurrence of the
mentioned activities on construction site
Please indicate the frequency of occurrence of the mentioned activities by using the scale
of 1 to 5. (1 = Never, 5 = Very Frequent).
1 2 3 4 5
Never Very Rare Seldom Frequent Very Frequent
A. Waiting for others to complete their works before the proceeding works
can be carried out
B. Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site
C. Waiting for materials to be delivered on site
D. Waiting for the skilled workers to be on site
E. Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by client and consultants
F. Over-allocation/ unnecessary equipment on site
G. Over-allocation/ unnecessary materials on site
H. Over-allocation/ unnecessary workers on site
I. Unnecessary procedures and working protocols
J. Material loss/ stolen from site during construction periods
K. Material deterioration/ damaged during construction periods
L. Mishandling or error in construction applications/ installation
M. Time for rework/ repair works/ defective works
N. Materials for rework/ repair works/ defective works
O. Time for workers’ resting during construction
P. Time in supervising and inspecting the construction works
Q. Time for instructions and communication among different tiers and
trades of workers
R. Time for transporting workers, equipment and materials
S. Accidents on site
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Section C: Sources/ Causes of Wastes
4. To your opinion, please identify the most likely sources/ causes of wastes to impact
on the productivity of the projects
Please indicate the frequency of occurrence of the mentioned activities by using the scale
of 1 to 5. (1 = Most Unlikely, 4 = Most Likely).
1 2 3 4
Most Unlikely Unlikely Likely Most Likely
Management & Administration Factors
A1 Poor coordination among project participants
A2 Poor planning and scheduling
A3 Lack of control
A4 Bureaucracy
People Factors
B1 Lack of trades skills
B2 Inexperience inspectors
B3 Too few supervisors/ foreman
B4 Uncontrolled sub-contracting practices
B5 Supervision too late
B6 Poor labour distribution
Execution Factors
C1 Inappropriate construction methods
C2 Outdated equipment
C3 Equipment shortage
C4 Poor equipment choice or ineffective equipment
C5 Poor site layout and setting out
C6 Poor site documentation
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Material Factors
D1 Delay of material delivery
D2 Poorly scheduled delivery of material to site
D3 Poor quality of material
D4 Inappropriate/ misuse of material
D5 Poor storage of material
D6 Poor material handling on site
Information and Communication Factors
E1 Defective or Wrong information
E2 Late information and decision making
E3 Unclear information
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Section D: Cause and Effects Relationship
5. To your experience in your work field, please relate the waste variations to the
contributory sources of wastes.
(Please fill in other secondary causes [if any] in the Other Causes Column, the causes
can be either from the list below or whichever causes differ from the list [Please specify])
A1 Poor coordination among project
participants
A2 Poor planning and scheduling
A3 Lack of control
A4 Bureaucracy
B1 Lack of trades skills
B2 Inexperience inspectors
B3 Too few supervisors/ foreman
B4 Uncontrolled sub-contracting practices
B5 Supervision too late
B6 Poor labour distribution
Example:
For A: Waiting for others to complete their
works before proceeding works can be carried
out
Major cause column can be filled with one major
cause to the problem for example A2: poor
planning & scheduling
Other cause can be filled with more than 1 cause
for example A3, A4 & B5 and so on.
C1 Inappropriate construction methods
C2 Outdated equipment
C3 Equipment shortage
C4 Poor equipment choice or ineffective
equipment
C5 Poor site layout and setting out
C6 Poor site documentation
D1 Delay of material delivery
D2 Poorly scheduled delivery of material to
site
D3 Poor quality of material
D4 Inappropriate/ misuse of material
D5 Poor storage of material
D6 Poor material handling on site
E1 Defective or wrong information
E2 Late information and decision making
E3 Unclear information
F Not relevant
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Events Major
Cause Other Causes
A Waiting for others to complete their works before the proceeding
works can be carried out
B Waiting for equipment to be delivered on site
C Waiting for materials to be delivered on site
D Waiting for the skilled workers to be on site
E Waiting for the clarification and confirmation by client/ consultants
F Over-allocation/ unnecessary equipment on site
G Over-allocation/ unnecessary materials on site
H Over-allocation/ unnecessary workers on site
I Unnecessary procedures and working protocols
J Material loss/ stolen from site during construction periods
K Material deterioration/ damaged during construction periods
L Mishandling or error in construction applications/ installation
M Rework/ repair works/ defective works
N Workers’ resting during construction
O Supervising and inspecting the construction works
P Instructions and communication among different tiers and trades of
workers
Q Transporting workers, equipment and materials
R Accidents on site