A decade of lessons learned: deployment of lean at a large general contractor

The purpose of this paper is to describe lean experiments from a period that lasted over a decade. The aim is to provide insights for both industry practitioners and academics concerning what worked and what did not work and to discuss barriers to avoid when taking academic concepts to industry. What makes this paper unique is that we are following the developments inside one company, Skanska Finland, uninterrupted for over a decade. Dr Glenn Ballard was closely involved in the developments and deployments throughout the journey. The paper confirms earlier findings of managing variability prior to other process improvements. At the same time, it is important to understand the minimum organisational level needed when developing and deploying lean methods. During our journey, the most successful deployment was the Last Planner System®; it has been both robust against market turns but also it has been possible to deploy it project-by-project. Thus, there is no need to wait until the whole company or a large part of it has understood the concept before deployment can start. Supplier development requires a wider scope than just a single project or the duration of a project for successful deployment. The weak or less sustainable deployment of logistics solutions in the construction industry may be because it requires industry-level technology standardisation and data platforms.