With productivity rates at the bottom of the charts, the construction industry may be a little too comfortable with waste in the many forms it can take — overlapping workflows, underutilization of talent, overproduction of materials and more. Small inefficiencies that go unnoticed for a long period of time can add up and cause schedule setbacks and project increases, some argue, a bit like the boiling frog scenario.
Proponents of lean construction say there are lessons to be learned from the way that Toyota streamlined its processes by cornering eight types of waste: defects, overproduction, waiting, unused talent, transportation, inventory, motion and extra processing.
