Production System Design for Speed and Reliability: A Case Study in Concrete Construction

摘要

This case study investigates the production practices of a "High Reliability" (HR) concrete supervisor-a supervisor who consistently achieves exceptional production and safety performance. The case describes how the supervisor designed the production system to build the concrete frame of a 10-story building under an accelerated schedule and under severe weather conditions. To shorten the operation's duration, the supervisor selected formwork systems that reduce installation time, and overlapped the concrete activities by reducing the "batch size, " and by using dedicated crews for deck and vertical concrete. However, the overlapping increased the dependencies between activities, and any deviation from the plan could impact the entire process. In order to create a reliable workflow and mitigate the effect of deviations, the supervisor used several strategies that addressed: (1) the organization of the production process; (2) the activity design; (3) resource management; and (4) crew management. These strategies converged to create a fast and highly reliable work system, and achieved an accelerated schedule with minimum waste and excellent safety results.