ENABLING LEAN THROUGH USING SHARED MENTAL MODELS FOR PRECAST CONSTRUCTION IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Despite efforts in recent years, construction remains the most inefficient industry in many countries. Lean principles have brought about massive productivity growth in the manufacturing industry but application to the construction industry is still relatively unknown or unexplored. From a lean point of view, poor construction productivity is due to construction wastes, that is, defects and rework, overproduction, waiting and idle time, non-utilised resources, transportation, inventory, motion and extra-processing. One of the key movements in the Singapore construction industry is the adoption of precast construction which involves transforming construction into a manufacturing process with more off-site prefabrication to improve site productivity. Yet contractors are still encountering high occurrence of construction wastes and the pool of foreign workers have not reduced significantly. This calls for more theoretical research to understand the value of enabling lean through using shared mental models for precast construction in Singapore.