Synergy between lean and value engineering concepts: Sri Lankan construction industry perspective

Abstract

The allied competitiveness and unpredictable nature of the construction industry forced to rethink on the performance enhancement tools in order to address the urgent matter of resource scarcity as a global dilemma. Hence, most of the construction firms highly concern about the customer’s satisfaction by means of giving value for the client’s money. The researchers established that Value Engineering (VE) and Lean concepts supersede all the other value achieving strategies since; both address the concept of Value in a greater extent. VE addresses the areas, which are not aligned with the methodological purview of Lean. In turn, Lean could enhance the effectiveness of VE efforts. Although there were some arguments on the above, there is lack of a research of investigating the synergy between Lean and VE concepts with related to the construction sector. Hence, this study investigates the synergy between Lean and VE concepts in order to explore the best value for client. Accordingly, a qualitative research approach was followed to attain the research aim. A comprehensive literature review followed by expert opinion surveys were used to investigate the synergy between the concepts. The information gathered were subsequently subjected to a content analysis. This study revealed that, there is a synergy among customer value principle, pre study, information and presentation phases, value stream principle with functional analysis and presentation phases, flow principle with creativity, evaluation, development and presentation phases, pull principle with functional analysis, presentation and post study phases, perfection principle with presentation and post study phases. The findings would be very much effective for advanced value achieving strategy development purpose which achieve the best value for the client in the extremity.