Lean Design Management
Lean design management provides a set of specific management tools for the design phase, mainly focused on construction projects. The philosophy behind Lean Design management is derived from Lean Construction, that focuses on two main values: Minimizing waste, and creating work flow. Lean Design however has a broader focus, with the emphasis on translating values and visions to a concrete project, securing maximum value for clients and providing a realistic and constructable solution for contractors.
This is done through six different types of workshops:
• Cooperation
• Vision
• Realism
• Critics
• Design phase
• Constructability
• Execution.
For the workshops, Lean design management provides different tools and recommendations as: Target costing, Photo Safari, dialogue recommendations for contracters in the early phase and how to implement the Last Planner system in the Design Phase.
Background
Lean Design utilizes some the ideas from Lean Construction in the design process. Lean construction originates from the Toyota production line, where Toyota developed the Toyota Production System (TPS), a production system to optimize the car-production line at Toyota. The main values of Lean Production are to minimize waste and maximize value in production. The developer of Lean production, Shingo S. defined waste as anything that did not create value for the customer/client, thus optimizing the production by making it Lean.The minimization of waste and maximization of value are also the underlying values for Lean Construction, where the tools from Toyota are used to optimize the processes that make up the “production” in construction. In Lean design these values are also present, with the addition of the value definition. The value definition is established thorugh a series of workshops gathering different sets of stakeholders in workshops, where they collaborate to establish a common set of project values, and with collaboration through with all stakeholders, transform these values into a concrete buildable project, that will provide most value for the client within the budget.
