Efficiency Enhancement in Residential Construction Through Lean Principles—A Case Study

Lean construction is adopted as a new management approach in an effort to increase value while minimizing waste. In this paper the various lean principles such as Daily PPC, Weekly PPC, root cause analysis, fish bone diagram, Pareto chart, 5S, Work sampling are explored to enhance the efficiency of a typical residential project. A residential building site located in Chennai is chosen for the study. The built-up area of one floor is approximately 1307 square feet. The primary objective of this project is to identify and eliminate the eight types of waste commonly found in the construction of residential buildings, using lean principles and tools. Work Sampling techniques aids in identifying and removing Non-Value-Added activities. Monitoring the project’s schedule allows for the assessment of daily and weekly Plan Percent Complete (PPC) metrics, thus the delays are identified. Causes for delays are investigated through root cause analysis. Based on the study, it is observed that time-lag can be avoided by 5S implementation. NVA activities were identified during the activities of brickwork, column shuttering and column concreting. The major causes of delay were identified as waiting for material, neighbour dispute and labour shortage. The possible solutions for the identified problems are discussed. Thus, the potential of adoption of lean principles in improving efficiency is demonstrated.