رسائل ماجيستير
English
2013
Improving project performance using lean construction in Egypt: a proposed framework
Ahmed Samer Ezz ElDin, Marwa Gamal Swefie
كلية العلوم والهندسة-الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة · مصر
There are numerous challenges and problems facing the construction industry in Egypt. The main criterion for success of any construction project is to deliver the project without time or cost overrun. Lean Construction is a new management technique that has been successfully implemented in many countries to increase the probability of a project success. This research examines the effectiveness of implementing lean thinking on the performance of Egyptian construction projects. First, the current appreciation and awareness of lean construction within the Egyptian construction industry is determined through an actual survey within one of the largest construction firms in Egypt. It is concluded that 55% of the respondents are not aware about lean concept but have high potentials to use new management techniques/approaches to improve the projects’ performance. The survey also presents some of the lean principles that are efficiently used in some of the construction projects in Egypt such as standardization, continuous improvement, housekeeping, customer focus, and reduce variability. However, some of the principles are still not fully implemented and need to be more considered in the Egyptian construction industry such as waste reduction, visual management, just-in-time, collaboration, benchmarking, and prefabrication. Second, a Proposed Lean Construction Framework is developed and several lean techniques are adapted. The developed framework consists of six items: 1) Process map 2) Current State Map 3) Waste Elimination 4) Used lean tools/techniques 5) Future State Map (for ongoing projects) 6) Ideal State Map (for new projects). The framework is applied on a Case Study for the ready mix concrete works of a garage area in an existing hotel project in Egypt to show its impact on the duration of certain processes in the project and on the non-value added activities. The three main phases of work examined in this case study are the preparation process (pre-execution), material delivery, and execution process of the ready mix concrete works. The data were collected through observations, monthly reports and schedules. The effectiveness and impact of some of the lean tools/techniques used in this research is evaluated based on previous implementations in similar countries to Egypt. In order to mimic the execution process of the ready mix concrete works in different projects conditions, concrete data is collected from 9 different projects in Egypt and is simulated in MS Excel to show the effect of the lean concepts on the duration of the execution process only. The results of applying the proposed framework to the current state for the three work phases of the project have showed significant improvements in time reduction, process efficiency and the number of the non-added value activities. It is found that the improvements in the project’s performance of the ideal state (future projects) are more than those of the future state (for ongoing project). The proposed Lean Construction Framework in this study is generic and can be applied to any type of work. However, the research results are based on one case study that only attributable and restricted to certain type of projects.
