Lean production concepts were developed in the car manufacture industry with the aim to increase the production efficiency, diminishing losses and increasing the profitability. After 1992, the application of the Lean management approach as a possible solution to the the construction industry increasing management problems related to waste, profitability, quality, costs and scheduling started to be researched.
Lean Construction as a management philosophy has had a late development when
compared to the Lean Production concepts, that were largely studied and applied after 1970. Some of the reasons that created a hostile environment to the implementation of a new management approach are: first, the construction industry is well stablished, what contributed to build a thought that the things have been working since a long time, why to change now? And second, the products of the construction industry are always unique, how will be possible to implement processes and standards?
Even tough, the successful implementation of Lean Construction occurred in different projects with a good amount of case studies documented. With the implementation it was possible to focus the production on the adding value activities, eliminating the waste of labor, decrease the production time and increase the final products quality.
A relatively new field of implementation of Lean Construction is during projects to build affordable houses. These projects face similar problems related to profitability, waste and poor efficiency as other projects in the AEC industry. But these problems have even stronger impact in the projects for construction of affordable houses, once that this type of project presents more serious budget constraints and are often linked with low profit margins, tight budget and schedule.
This paper presents an analysis of existing case studies of the application of the lean construction principles in affordable housing works in different countries of the world, including case studies in South America and Africa.
The implementation of Lean Construction philosophy in these projects have the potential of increase the efficiency and profitability, attracting more private investors to a market share with growing demand. Three case studies, located in different places and facing local issues were chosen to be analyzed. Each project implemented partially the Lean Construction Concepts and focused in specific processes and activities. Despite the particularities of each project, in all of them benefits of the implementation were measured.
The benefits of the Lean Construction Concepts were listed and analyzed to demonstrate that with the implementation processes in projects of construction of affordable houses is possible to increase the production efficiency, reducing losses, increasing the product quality and improving productivity, which caused direct impact on time reduction, materials and labor savings and profitability.
Reinbold_Full_Paper_ICCCBE2018.pdf 