Implementing Lean Visual Tools on the Closeout Phase of a Globalscale Industrial Project

Abstract

The construction industry has long been struggling with issues such as safety, efficiency, and quality. Many tools and methods have been introduced to alleviate the current problems of this industry. Lean practices have been promising in recent years in the matter of improving project safety, communications and efficiency. However, these tools have mainly been implemented at the peak of a construction project’s activities, where resources are at their highest levels, but seemed to be neglected at the ending phase of closeout. To study the effectiveness of lean practices in this phase, this paper has evaluated the utilization of visual management methods as a case study on a large-scale multi-phase, multi-cultural industrial project in Mexico. Hence, a visual matrix was developed after thorough analysis and continues improvement. Moreover, procedures were developed to use this tool to communicate, track and coordinate the closeout process. After the completion of the project, five milestone dates were extracted, and the information was compared against previous phase data. The result of the study shows that using this tool can decrease the duration of the closeout process, improve the communication between different stakeholders and aid to overcome challenges derived from differences in culture, methods, and expectations.