Kifokeris, D and Koch, C (2020) Swedish lean construction practices identified in the last decade of research. In: Scott, L and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 36th Annual ARCOM Conference, 7-8 September 2020, Online Event, UK.
Abstract
Despite years of promotion, there is a limited practical adoption of lean construction (LC) in Sweden. The industry still suffers from many issues which LC appeared to solve, partly due to processes and flows in the organizational and project levels being tailored to fit into a given LC framework, rather than tailoring LC tenets to fit actual needs. To inform a more requirements-driven adoption of LC in Sweden, this contribution aims at analysing the scope of LC conceptual variants documented in the rich Swedish-based research on LC concepts in operation. Methodologically, a systematic literature review, utilizing the augmented concept-centric review framework, and adopting the abductive method of qualitative analysis, captures the studies featuring empirical data on Swedish LC concepts in operation. This method is furtherly strengthened by using the references-of-references and “snowballing” techniques. Then, the review outcomes are analysed regarding their scopes. It is shown that LC adoption scopes are characterised by the focus on individual LC aspects and/or the integration of LC with other frameworks, leading to a customization of LC to fit certain purposes. Furthermore, through the years, there has been a heavy focus on industrialized, rather than “conventional”, construction; but while the study on the former has been precise and extensive, the needs of conventional construction (i.e. when a large part of production takes place on-site) have not been adequately addressed. This becomes even more critical due to industrialized construction having a well-defined, but also consistently small market share in the Swedish context. Moreover, within the emerged scopes (pertaining to design, production, partnering and stakeholder collaboration, planning, strategy, and supply chain), LC is being increasingly integrated with IT – however, these scopes are scattered, with limited knowledge accumulation. This may entail that more theoretical and empirical work is needed for a stronger requirements-driven adoption of LC in Sweden.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | lean construction; industrialized construction; practice; Sweden |
| Index terms: | collaboration, market share, strategy, lean construction, partnering, integration, promotion, systematic literature review, Sweden, customization, industrialized construction, qualitative analysis |
| Subjects: | building construction, research design and methodology, management, organizational analysis, construction type, partnership management, market analysis, Geography, research evaluation and metrics, construction manufacturing |
| Topics: | Human Resources, Organizational Design, Construction Technology, Site Management, Research Practice, Geographical Context, Business Strategy, Stakeholder Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here