For Immediate Release: March 21, 2008 Tocci Building Corporation, Woburn, MA. John Tocci, President and CEO of Tocci Building Companies recently attended an International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) conference in NYC.

Topics discussed included:

• Learning from Plan Failures
• Design Structure Matrix—redesigning the design process
• Reverse Phase Scheduling
• Look ahead planning: tracking ‘tasks made ready’ 'tasks anticipated’ ‘planned project capacity’ and ‘line of balance scheduling’
• Establishing Long Term Integrated Project Teams
• Set based design matrices
• Building Trust in teams
• Principals of Factory Physics applied to Construction
• Establishing Reliable Work Flow

"The International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC), founded in 1993, makes up a network of professionals and researchers in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) who feel that the practice, education, and research of AEC have to be radically renewed in order to respond to the challenges ahead." - IGLC

What is Lean Construction?

According to the Lean Construction Institute: Lean Construction is a production management-based approach to project delivery -- a new way to design and build capital facilities. Lean production management has caused a revolution in manufacturing design, supply and assembly. Applied to construction, Lean changes the way work is done throughout the delivery process. Lean Construction extends from the objectives of a lean production system - maximize value and minimize waste - to specific techniques and applies them in a new project delivery process. As a result:

• The facility and its delivery process are designed together to better reveal and support customer purposes. Positive iteration within the process is supported and negative iteration reduced.
• Work is structured throughout the process to maximize value and to reduce waste at the project delivery level.
• Efforts to manage and improve performance are aimed at improving total project performance because it is more important than reducing the cost or increasing the speed of any activity.
• "Control" is redefined from "monitoring results" to "making things happen." The performance of the planning and control systems are measured and improved.

The reliable release of work between specialists in design, supply and assembly assures value is delivered to the customer and waste is reduced. Lean Construction is particularly useful on complex, uncertain and quick projects. It challenges the belief that there must always be a trade between time, cost, and quality.

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