Survey of Motivations, Benefits, and Implementation...

Survey of Motivations, Benefits, and ImplementationChallenges of Last Planner System Users

Jose L. Fernandez-Solis, Ph.D.1; Vishal Porwal2; Sarel Lavy, Ph.D., M.ASCE3; Ali Shafaat4;Zofia K. Rybkowski, Ph.D.5; Kiyoung Son, Ph.D.6; and Nishi Lagoo7

Abstract: The number of construction project managers initializing the use of the Last Planner System of Production Control (LPS), anoperating system for project management designed to optimize work flow and promote rapid learning, is rapidly increasing, motivated byindustry trends and testimonials of its perceived benefits. This study, limited to the building sector, is a systematic literature and testimonialsearch of the perceived motivations and benefits or challenges for choosing LPS. It substantiates the claims of those perceptions through astructured survey of senior and mid-level managers. Quantitative statistical tools infer that practitioners who use LPS experience more reliableplanning, better supply chain integration, and less work flow time. However, managers who directly implement LPS are faced with externalresistance from clients and subcontractors, and feel that their organization does not offer the necessary incentives for adopting LPS, indicatinga possible clash of paradigms. The case studies and testimonials were available in the literature referenced in the paper, but the survey and themethod for analysis are new and have not been published elsewhere, either wholly or in part.DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000606.© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.

CE Database subject headings: Construction management; Surveys; Planning.

Author keywords: Percent plan complete (PPC); Last planner system; Five whys; Daily huddle meetings; Six sigma; Reasons chartingand constraint analysis.

Background

Lean construction (Koskela 1992) is a relatively new constructionproject management trend, borrowed and adapted from manufac-turing and guided toward construction production management,focused on improving production flow. Its primary objective isthe continual elimination of non-value adding activities (waste)through a novel flow control aimed at increasing performance

reliability and reducing variability in production. Ballard (1993,2000) initiated development of the Last Planner System of Produc-tion Control (LPS), which introduced major changes in the wayconstruction projects are planned and controlled. LPS is an openarchitecture platform; in two short decades, it has experienced anexponential increase of tools, techniques, and metrics attached toor applied in LPS. This paper limits its research topic to the build-ing subsector [North American Industry Classification System(NAICS) code 236] of the construction sector in general (NAICScode 23), as defined by NAICS (2007), due to time and resourceconstraints. All case studies and surveys are from professionals inthe building construction sector.

The Last Planner refers to the last individual, typically the fore-man, able to ensure predictable work flow downstream. LPS isan operating system for project management that is designed tooptimize work flow and promote rapid learning (G. Howell, per-sonal communication, 2011). According to Ballard (1993), the ideabehind LPS originated in the need for control, with a strategy ofincreasing work flow predictability, also known as production sys-tem stabilization and increased work plan predictability, throughcontrolling the quality of assignments in weekly work plans. Pullschedule or reverse phase scheduling (RPS) was added later,prompted by the realization that conventional scheduling was asinadequate as conventional control. Scheduling is completed inseveral steps, including milestone planning, phase scheduling, lookahead planning (some use six weeks, others use 10), and weeklywork plan. The performance measurement metric is percent plancomplete (PPC). Several other tools and techniques are associatedwith LPS: Five Whys, Stickies on the Wall, First Run Studies,Daily Huddle Meetings, Reasons Charting, and Constraint Analy-sis. Each of these terms is defined by Lean Construction Institute(LCI) and is accessible online. The open-ended architecture allowsfor experimentation through a continuous improvement paradigm.

1Assistant Professor, Dept. of Construction Science, College of Archi-tecture, 3137 TAMU, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX 77843-3137(corresponding author). E-mail: [email protected]

2MSCM, Dept. of Construction Science, College of Architecture,3137 TAMU, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX 77843-3137. E-mail:[email protected]

3Associate Professor, Dept. of Construction Science, College of Archi-tecture, 3137 TAMU, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX 77843-3137.E-mail: [email protected]

4MSSE, Dept. of Industrial and Systems Engineering, College ofEngineering, 3131 TAMU, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX77843-3131. E-mail: [email protected]

5Assistant Professor, Dept. of Construction Science, College of Archi-tecture, 3137 TAMU, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX 77843-3137.E-mail: [email protected]

6Dept. of Architecture, College of Architecture, 3137 TAMU, TexasA&M Univ., College Station, TX 77843-3137. E-mail: [email protected]

7MSCM Student, Dept. of Construction Science, College of Architec-ture, 3137 TAMU, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX 77843-3137.E-mail: [email protected]

Note. This manuscript was submitted on September 15, 2011; approvedon May 17, 2012; published online on May 22, 2012. Discussion periodopen until September 1, 2013; separate discussions must be submitted forindividual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Construction En-gineering and Management, Vol. 139, No. 4, April 1, 2013. © ASCE,ISSN 0733-9364/2013/4-354-360/$25.00.

354 / JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT © ASCE / APRIL 2013

J. Constr. Eng. Manage. 2013.139:354-360.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000606




The effectiveness of the ideal for LPS of delivering customervalue while minimizing waste has been continuously evaluatedby researchers from both academia and industry—often workingtogether (Ballard et al. 2009; Ballard and Howell 2003; Mohanand Iyer 2005). In addition, practitioners have acknowledged thepotential of these new management tools (Picchi and Granja2004; Huovila and Koskela 1998; Ballard et al. 2007; Senaratneand Wijesiri 2008). Although the Lean Construction ideal of con-tinuous improvement in production is becoming more popular, asattested to by the increasing number of LCI chapters formed eachyear throughout the United States, LPS is not accepted on a largescale by the construction industry (JØrgensen et al. 2004; Mossman2009; Johansen and Walter 2007). Other contributing challenges tothe adoption of LPS are the fragmented and complex nature of theconstruction industry (Fernandez-Solis 2008; Mossman 2009) lowtech workforce and processes, lack of soft skills, lack of lean edu-cation, and lack of computer literacy among practitioners.

To specify the challenges for senior and mid-level managers,a literature search was conducted based on a selected set of26 case projects. The results were compared and validated with aquestionnaire.

Research Method

The research is divided into two phases. In the first phase, a liter-ature review, this study identifies areas of LPS application, thechallenges faced by architectural engineering contractor (AEC)professionals during implementation and use of LPS, and the re-ported benefits. Based on findings from the first phase, the secondphase employs a survey to more specifically assess the challengesfaced by senior and mid-level management during the implemen-tation of LPS. The managers who participated in the questionnairein 2010 have considerable work experience with LPS implementa-tion, and the results are used as a validation of previous studies. Thescope of this research effort is limited to challenges at the manage-ment level and the reported benefits of LPS implementation. Thisresearch is unable to assess user challenges at the project level fromthe perspective of field management because superintendents andforemen did not respond to the survey in large enough numbers.Although it would have been better to validate these findings bysurveying participants from the original, published, case studyprojects, time constraints and the practicality of locating theseparticipants led to a survey of a different population of LPS users.This is an acknowledged limitation in the study.

Phase I

In the first phase, the authors conducted a systematic review of LPSliterature to identify areas of LPS application and the challengesfaced by AEC professionals. The scope was limited to publicationsdealing with LPS implementation and its use at organizational andproject levels. Only descriptive articles reporting on real exampleswere considered, resulting in a total of 26 cases; purely theoretical,conceptual, and abstract works were excluded.

The literature survey strategy was developed by first identifyingrelevant data sources, time frame, and key words. Initially, a verybroad selection of databases was identified, covering journals,conference proceedings, books, and articles from trade journals.These databases provide access to a wide variety of publicationssuch as the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management,Lean Construction Journal, Conference Proceedings of the AnnualConferences of the International Group of Lean Construction(IGLC), and Conference Proceedings of the Construction

Congress of ASCE. To restrict the search to more recent publica-tions, the time frame for this study included only literature pub-lished between 2000 and 2009.

The IGLC and LCI have a long history of conducting pilot im-plementations for the LPS on a variety of construction projects(Khanzode et al. 2008; Ballard et al. 2007; Lane and Woodman2000; Mikati et al. 2007; Tsao and Tommelein 2004). Overall,IGLC and LCI researchers have collected and published case studydata from more than 200 projects since 1996.

Single case studies are extremely valuable when researchingtypical cases that serve a demonstrative purpose (Yin 2009). How-ever, it is not appropriate for researchers and construction or designprofessionals to generalize the results of a single case study for theirproject and their specific application of LPS. This study, therefore,aggregates the results of many different case studies, thus buildingthe argument of how practitioners on these LPS implementationshave applied LPS methods. This aggregation method is contrary tothe multiple case study design described by Yin (2009), becausethis study does not attempt to replicate findings on multiple cases.Rather, it summarizes findings from different cases to offer a broadoverview about the actual state of LPS implementation and howthe findings apply to the construction sector. The researchers didnot use a random sampling logic to choose the cases, but sampledspecific cases that provide the best possible overview about LPSapplications.

Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of the 26 case projectsselected for this study. These test case projects include three com-mercial, six institutional, six industrial, seven transportation, andthree residential projects. Five of the 26 test cases are non-U.S.projects, based in Europe, Asia, and South America.

Phase I Findings

BenefitsAlthough there are likely additional benefits, only the benefitsspecifically reported by the case study authors from the literaturereview have been listed. The benefits realized by LPS implemen-tation on 26 test case projects are listed in Table 2; LPS was suc-cessfully used for the purpose for which it was intended. The resultsin Table 2 are useful for understanding the answer to the compellingquestion: “why use LPS?”

ChallengesThe results indicate that AEC professionals face LPS challenges attwo stages. First is the implementation stage, when the project teamis introduced to LPS and pilot projects are in progress. These areorganizational challenges faced by senior and mid-level manage-ment in the initial stages. A second stage occurs when LPS is usedby an experienced team, in which the technical challenges areassociated with skill building and human capital enhancement.Table 3 lists the challenges faced by AEC professionals duringthe selected 26 test case projects.

Phase II

For the second phase of the study, the authors designed a question-naire to assess the challenges faced by senior and mid-level man-agers during actual implementation of LPS in their organizations.The questionnaire was designed based on the LPS implementationchallenges identified in Phase I and with the help of LPS experts’feedback (Iris Tommelein, Greg Howell, Lauri Koskela, AlanMossman, Min Liu, Stephen Knapp, and Tariq Abdelhamid).

JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT © ASCE / APRIL 2013 / 355


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Table 1. List of Case Studies

Case Reference Project Type of project

C1 Garza and Leong (2000) Advanced Communication and Information TechnologyCenter (ACITC) at Virginia Tech

Institutional

C2 Ballard (2000) Center for Clinical Services Research, Stanford University InstitutionalC3 Ballard (2000) Texas showplace project CommercialC4 Fiallo and Revelo (2002) 102 one family units: housing project ResidentialC5 Nielsen and Thomassen (2004) 3 schools in Skelskor: refurbishment and new build InstitutionalC6 Kim et al. (2007); Kim and Jang (2005) Seoul subway project TransportationC7 Kim et al. (2007); Kim and Jang (2005) Busan subway project TransportationC8 Arbulu and Soto (2006) Central bus station project InstitutionalC9 Salem et al. (2005); Salem and

Solomon (2006)Four-floor university parking garage Commercial

C10 Ansell et al. (2007) 3 miles of carriageway renewal TransportationC11 Jang et al. (2007) Nam Chun Highway project TransportationC12 Jang et al. (2007) Seoul Ring Road project TransportationC13 Kemmer et al. (2007) 17-story residential building ResidentialC14 Simonsson and Emborg (2007) Industrial bridge construction IndustryC15 Sterzi et al. (2007) Construction and refurbishment of an industrial building for a steel manufacturer IndustryC16 Sterzi et al. (2007) Industrial building for a car manufacturer IndustryC17 Sterzi et al. (2007) Construction and refurbishment of an industrial building for a car manufacturer IndustryC18 Ballard et al. (2007) Air Products: Large chemical plant IndustryC19 Ballard et al. (2007) Heathrow Terminal 5 building: civil phase (British) CommercialC20 AlSehaimi et al. (2009) Faculty of business and administration building InstitutionalC21 AlSehaimi et al. (2009) General classrooms and laboratories InstitutionalC22 Ballard et al. (2009) New town development ResidentialC23 Hamzeh et al. (2009) Cathedral Hill Hospital project Health CareC24 Liu and Ballard (2009) Pipeline for an oil refinery plant IndustryC25 Olano et al. (2009) Leaching pad construction TransportationC26 Olano et al. (2009) 7.1 km highway construction Transportation

Table 2. Reported Benefits Experienced in Projects

Number Benefits Project code

1 Increased work flow reliability C4, C6, C7,C8, C25, C26, C15, C16, C172 Improved supply chain integration C15, C16, C173 Reduced project delivery or production time C10, C14, C18, C8, C224 Improved communication among project participants C6, C7, C235 Less firefighting or fewer day-to-day problems C6, C7, C106 Improvement in quality of work practice at construction site C20, C217 Enhancement of managerial practices in construction projects C20, C218 Knowledge expansion and learning among project teams C20, C219 Reduced stress levels on construction sites C14, C22

Table 3. Reported Challenges and Distribution of Questions

Number Challenges LPS implementation phase reported in literature Questions

1 Organizational inertia or resistance to change or “This is how I’vealways done it” attitude

C1, C4, C9, C10, C11, C12, C15, C16, C17,C18, C20, C21, C15, C16, C17, C19

3

2 Lack of commitment to LPS implementation or negative attitudetowards new systems

C1, C2, C3, C9, C11, C12, C18, C20, C21,C24, C8, C19

2

3 Lack of human capital: lack of understanding of new system,difficulty in making quality assignments, or lack of skills, training,and experience

C2, C3, C6, C7, C8, C9, C11, C12, C13, C19,C24, C8, C23

8

4 Lack of leadership or failure of management commitment ornon-supportive organizational climate

C1, C2, C3, C8, C18, C19, C24 8

5 Lack of stakeholder support C1, C2, C3, C9, C13 56 Lack of empowerment of field management or lengthy approval

procedure from client and top managementC11, C12, C20, C21, C24

7 Poor use of information generated during implementation of LPS C2, C3, C11, C128 Contracting and legal issues or structure C1, C2, C3 39 Partial or late implementation of LPS C20, C21, C2410 Bad team chemistry or lack of collaboration C18, C19 111 Bad work ethics and cultural issues C20, C2112 Short-term vision C20, C2113 Misinterpretation of PPC indicator C1



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The questionnaire consisted of three primary sections: (1) a per-ception survey to assess the challenges, (2) multiple-choice andopen ended questions to assess LPS practices, and (3) a profileof each respondent. Table 1 describes the distribution of questionsin the survey questionnaire.

Psychometricians advocate using seven or nine levels. Also, arecent empirical study (Dawes 2008) found that a five-point orseven-point scale may produce slightly higher mean scores relativeto the highest possible attainable score, compared to those pro-duced from a 10-point scale, and this difference was statisticallysignificant. These considerations influenced the decision to adopta seven-point scale.

The design of the survey was based on challenges identified inthe 26 test case projects in Phase I. The survey was posted onlineusing Google Documents and a survey link was sent out throughemail. The survey link was sent to 56 LCI corporate member com-panies, nine LCI approved consultants, and 131 LCI members,making a sample size of 196.The online survey questionnaire wasavailable from April 22, 2010, to July 2, 2010. A request was alsosent through the European Group of Lean Construction (EGLC)newsletter. A total of 40 returned surveys were analyzed using de-scriptive statistics and the results were compared with the literaturesurvey results from Phase I. The first question on the survey ques-tionnaire was “Do you use Last Planner System for planning andcontrol purposes?” Only respondents with the answer “Yes” werequalified to answer further questions.

Thirty-four respondents reported experience with LPS imple-mentation on 360 projects, which results in an average experienceof 10.6 projects per respondent. Fig. 1 shows the 20 statements(S01–S20) used to assess the perceptions of senior and mid-levelAEC professionals about the challenge categories (C02–C07) dur-ing the implementation of LPS.

In the questionnaire, five positive statements were restated asnegative statements. For example, the positive statement “There isa strong leadership in my organization for implementing LPS” inthe survey questionnaire was restated to form negative StatementS05 “There is no strong leadership in my organization for imple-menting LPS.” Statements S05, S06, S08, S11, and S12 were re-stated and are included. In this manner, the statements (S05–S09)under challenge Category C02, “Lack of leadership or failure ofmanagement commitment or organizational climate,” become neg-ative. An endorsement of any of these statements by respondentswould mean an endorsement of challenge Category C02. This isdone to analyze the survey data based on the respective challengecategory. For this analysis, answers to these questions are inverted,that is, a response of 7 becomes 1, 6 becomes 2, and 5 becomes 3 ona seven-point Likert scale.

Phase II Findings

The perception survey of AEC professionals was broken down intotwo levels: team level and organizational level. Following is a sum-mary of the results drawn from the survey.

Team level:• AEC professionals perceive that people in their organizations

have enough knowledge about using LPS and they do not findit hard to use; however, there is a lack of experience in usingLPS in their organizations (Fig. 2).

• AEC professionals whose organizations do not have formaltraining programs for LPS implementation believe that peoplein their organizations are not skilled at using LPS. Also, whenAEC professionals perceive that people in their organizationsare not skilled at using LPS, they also believe that people intheir organizations find it hard to use and vice versa.

• More than 75% of respondents believe that standard proceduresin their organizations do not hamper LPS implementation.Additionally, 43% of AEC professionals perceive that theirorganizations provide a positive climate for implementation,but people in their organizations are reluctant to implementand use LPS.

• Fifty-five percent of responding AEC professionals believe thatpeople in their organizations are willing to change. More than50% of AEC professionals believe that people in their organiza-tions are willing to change when new systems such as LPS areintroduced.

• When AEC professionals perceive that people in their organiza-tions are unwilling to change when new systems are introduced,they also believe that people in their organizations are reluctantto implement and use LPS and vice versa.

• AEC professionals perceive that people in their organizationsfind it easy to collaborate with teams from other organizationsduring the weekly work plan (WWP) meetings.

• In 25% of respondents’ organizations, middle managementmakes commitments primarily in WWP meetings; there is someconcern that these commitments do not extend beyond WWPmeetings.

• AEC professionals perceive that their organizations have strongleadership and management commitment to the implementationof LPS and there is a positive climate in their organizations forLPS implementation.

• AEC professionals who perceive that their organizations havestrong leadership for LPS implementation also believe that man-agement in their organizations is committed to LPS implemen-tation and vice versa.Organizational level:

• There is a lack of understanding of the new system (LPS) in42% of AEC professionals’ organizations.

• AEC professionals receive good support and encouragementfrom the owner (client) during LPS implementation and theirorganizations include subcontractors in the meetings.

• Fifty-one percent of respondents perceive that their organiza-tions face external conflicts during LPS implementation, but38% do not believe this to be the case.

• AEC professionals perceive that their organizations face nocontractual or legal issues when implementing and using LPS.

• Organizations with more experience on LPS projects tend toimplement LPS from the beginning of a project.

• The majority of AEC professionals’ organizations do not havean LPS implementation plan.

• LPS was implemented on projects irrespective of project deliv-ery method. However, in the majority of projects where LPS isimplemented, the organizations were using relatively collabora-tive project delivery methods (e.g., other than design-bid-build).

General Findings

The results show that training is an important part of implementingLPS. Developing the skills of human capital assets will help theorganization to more easily implement LPS requirements. All com-panies who had representatives in the second phase have trainingprograms. At a minimum, the LPS components utilized includedconstraint analysis, reason charting, first run studies, and root causeanalysis. This implies that these organizations found LPS to be agood problem solving tool. Survey respondents reported that theyuse LPS with integrated project delivery (IPD), construction man-agement (CM) at risk, and design-build (DB) project delivery meth-ods. It can be conjectured that owners and managers who promoteIPD, DB, and CM at risk tend to adopt the LPS more than those that



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Fig. 1. Statements included in the survey questionnaire



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practice design bid build. It is evident from these results that im-plementation practices are improving, relative to past LPS applica-tions, and there is further room for improvement.

Although it would have been better to survey the participants inthe case study projects, this was not possible; the case studies werecompleted by others before this survey was conceived. This is anacknowledged limitation of the current study. Nevertheless, thecase studies helped to identify a list of challenges and the surveyhelped to confirm or reject challenges on the list, taking participantresponses at face value. Further studies will shed greater light onthese findings.

Conclusions

Reported benefits attributed to LPS implementation were:(1) smooth work flow, (2) predictable work plans, (3) reduced cost,(4) reduced time of project delivery, (5) improved productivity, and(6) greater collaboration with field personnel and subcontractors.

Test case projects also reported certain challenges faced byproject participants when applying LPS: (1) lack of leadership,(2) organizational inertia, (3) resistance to change, (4) lack of train-ing, (5) contractual issues, and (6) lack of experience and knowl-edge, among others.

Despite these challenges, implementation of LPS is on the rise.The growing popularity of LPS suggests that the stated challengesare either non-fatal or at least surmountable. Nevertheless, it is alsoimportant to recognize that directly addressing these challengeswill likely both further increase the level of adoption of LPS withinorganizations, and enhance the productivity value of LPS on anyone project.

Publisher’s Note. This paper was posted ahead of print with anincorrect author list. The correct author list appears in this versionof the paper.

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 N SO1 40 SO2 40 SO3 40 SO4 40 SO5 40 SO6 40 SO7 38 SO8 40 SO9 40 SO10 39 SO11 40 SO12 38 SO13 40 SO14 40 SO15 40 SO16 39 SO17 39 SO18 40 SO19 40 SO20 40 Legend: : Represents the rankings received that range between the 1st and the 3rd quartiles : Represents the entire range of rankings received : Represents the median ranking

Fig. 2. Rankings received by survey respondents for each statement, by range, median, and 1st and 3rd quartiles (1: strong disagreement; 7: strongagreement)



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http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0742-597X(2006)22:4(168)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9364(2004)130:6(780)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9364(2004)130:6(780)

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