Sources of Waste on Construction Site: A Comparison to the Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

The wastes of the supply chain should be reduced to achieve the stabilization of construction operations in lean-based construction management. The aim of this paper is to investigate the communication related sources of waste on construction worksite when compared to the manufacturing industry. The methodology used involves several observations of Japanese construction worksites and interviews with worksite managers and executives of some construction companies, and public institutions, and participation at forums for exchanging practical construction experiences conducted over the last few years. Two main results are obtained. The first one details the three peculiarities of construction, specific customer, site production, and temporary organization as described in prior research. The second one proposes a structural model to depict wastes caused by temporary organization, one of the three mentioned peculiarities. These findings contribute to better understanding of the peculiarities of construction in view of applying lean techniques, and to broadening the practitioners’ viewpoint by providing a guideline to gain the capability of a sharp and systematic understanding of their worksite.