Lean construction (LC) and building information modeling (BIM) are two of the prominent concepts challenging the traditional practices in construction management. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often constitute the largest group in construction supply chains. It was found that despite the importance of SMEs, the current LC and BIM literature falls short in terms of...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss a production planning and control model known as the Lean construction management (LCM) model, which applies a number of visual tools in a systematic way to the planning and control process. The application of the visual tools in this way facilitates the flow of information, thus...

Product Modularity refers to the hierarchical partitioning of products into their constitutive components. This concept has been explored in manufacturing to ease product design, simplify production, and to efficiently provide variety. Efforts have been made to transfer this knowledge to the construction context (i.e. one-off products, temporary supply chain, production taking place inside the product)...

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...

Visual management (VM) is argued to provide a more rapid and reliable mode of communication in comparison to traditional alternatives. VM is thus compatible with the lean tenets of time compression and variability reduction.