Lean construction: should lean construction be part of a construction company's objective in South Africa?

Abstract

The construction industry in South Africa is not perfect and there are all kinds of chronic problems like for example low productivity, poor safety, inferior working conditions, waste and insufficient quality, and evaluation of the performance at site and project level. These problems also exist in other countries around the world. In some of these countries (like Japan, America and some European countries) they developed a new production philosophy, called lean construction, which was developed to solve these problems. The objective of this treatise is to investigate this process called lean construction to see what it is; how it is implemented; how its performance can be measured; and what tools are used to execute lean construction in a construction company. The sole point of this investigation will be to show that this new form of production management should become part of a construction company’s objective, aim and goal in South Africa and will not only help these companies to solve chronic problems in a construction company itself but also on the different sites of the construction company. This will not only apply for construction companies in South Africa but also for construction companies around the world.