Workshop on Lean Management ‘Leap Forward with Lean’ today

A workshop on Lean Management applications for the construction, consultancy and manufacturing sectors will be held today at Galle Face Hotel, Colombo.

This is a novel concept introduced to the industry for the first time in Sri Lanka and promises to improve the organisations’ bottom line by enhancing efficiency of the total product process in saving on materials, effort and time.

This revolutionary philosophy evolved as Japanese car manufacturers, especially the Toyota Corporation, were challenged by their rivals to make ‘leaner and meaner cars’ especially by reducing the costs of production.

They had not forgotten how the British and some continental carmakers eventually folded up because of a lack of prudent planning and efficiency in their production lines.

This was further motivated by the threat posed by some emerging Asian countries to Japanese car manufacturers.

Therefore a legendary engineer, Mr. Ohna of Toyota in Japan, studied the whole process flow of production and devised a new system that was called Toyota Production System (TPS).

The entire process was meticulously analysed to minimise waste, excessive inventory, defects, rework, overlapping, just in time ordering, etc.

The whole Toyota Corporation worked as a cohesive team and all departments were taken on board and planning and scheduling were dovetailed as one seamless process. The ‘push’ and ‘pull’ between departments was set in a permanent state of dynamic equilibrium.

As this concept was copied by others Lean Production was born.

Whereas Lean Production commenced with manufacturing industries, it was later adopted by the health sector, the construction industry, etc.

A study in the UK has found that in construction projects approximately 20% is wasted or lost considering the many variables encountered unlike the mass production factory process. Thus it was postulated that by applying Lean Management techniques an appreciable saving on overall costs could be achieved even in the construction sector.

In a nutshell Lean Management attempts to get all departments (Design, Planning, Procurement, Production, etc) on the same platform at the initial planning stage and have everybody analyse the process thoroughly to reduce over-design, excess stock, defects/rework and issue clear lines of communication so that all the bottlenecks are identified and the process is geared to reduce costs and save on overall time as well.

The Lean Management philosophy was later adopted by the construction industry. 

Unlike the manufacturing process which targets mass production, the construction industry has many more variables to be considered such as weather, the ground conditions, environment impacts, social issues, etc.

Therefore by addressing all variables a UK study has found that savings on costs can be made between 5% and 20%, thus enhancing profits and cutting down on the time of delivery as well.

Since the Lean Management concept is new to Sri Lanka, a world-renowned authority Dr. Iris D Tommelein, who is a Professor of Engineering and Project Management at the University of California Berkley, USA was invited by the Chamber of Construction Industry Sri Lanka to conduct the workshop on Lean Management techniques for the manufacturing, construction and consultancy sectors of Sri Lanka.

Today’s workshop will commence at 1.30 p.m. at the Jubilee Ballroom. Tickets can be obtained from the Chamber of Construction Industry Sri Lanka. Email [email protected].