APPLICATION OF THE LAST PLANNER SYSTEM IN THE INDIAN

BUILDING CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

By

Senjam Romero Singh

Abstract

             

India is fast moving forward with the recent pace of economic boom that it witnessed. Its economy has been rapidly developing with respect to the various sectors. With a rising GDP and a Government Policy directed towards the development of Infrastructure, the construction

Industry is also witnessing a boom. The construction industry contributes to about 7.80% of the GDP. However, due to the use of the age old traditional method of planning and project control most of the projects in India have been suffering from schedule and cost overrun of as much as 50% in certain sectors. In order to avoid a loss in GDP the construction Industry has to find ways and means to adopt project control systems that results in removal of unnecessary wastage. The Last Planner System (LPS) should be adopted in the Indian Construction

Industry for the removal of wastage and better achievements of the project goals considering its wide application all over the world.

As India has its own unique problems and characteristics the LPS has to be remodeled to better suit its need. In this research work attempts have been made to provide a LPS model that addresses the issue keeping the core ideas and concept in mind.

Case Study research with an experimental setting has been used to achieve the research

objectives. Experiment and data collection has been carried out on two projects being undertaken by a small and a large scale industry that represents the different scale of construction. An attempt has also been made to provide an implementation strategy that can be effectively used in application of the LPS concept in the country.

Executive summary

Rationale of research

This research has been conducted to develop a model for Indian construction industry to for productivity improvement through Last Planner System.

Objectives of study

To develop a simple working model of the Last Planner System to be adopted in Indian Construction Industry. To implement the LPS model and study its effect on the productivity and plan reliability and to improve the LPS model and suggest an implementation strategy

Methodology

The exploratory research method is used to study productivity management in Indian construction industry, through literature review ,expert verification and by studying two cases from Indian construction industry..

Findings and conclusion

The Last Planner System Model used in the two case studies was designed based on studies of the characteristics of the Indian Construction Industry and the feedbacks received from the Experts who were consulted to verify the model and the construct of the experiment. The refined Model was then used for the experiment. This satisfies our first objective.

The model which was put into experiment has produced some positive result. The model used was able to solve certain problems related to wastage of time spent waiting for resources on site during execution of the activities in the projects. The project participants were confident that if the Last Planner System was applied in the projects and considerable amount of time was spent in gathering experience in its use, it can solve most of the problems related to unreliable planning that does not consider the ground realities in the site and problems related to resource allocation thereby avoiding wastage of time in waiting. Removing these two problems will remove unnecessary overtime and extra commitment of resources. A smoother work flow will lead to increase in motivation and commitment in the project participants. The

Last Planner System is hence considered effective for application in the Indian Building Construction projects. This satisfies our Second objective.

All the feedback received from the experiment participants and the observation made during experiment has led to an improvement in the Last Planner Model and development of an implementation strategy.

Recommendations

·         Maintenance of written guidelines of the implementation of the Last Planner System by each company based on the company structure and policy and the lesson learnt gained from experience in using the LPS. Roles and responsibility of each individual should be clearly defined.

·         The Last planner should be a group headed by the site engineer who will closely coordinate work with the supervisors and the work crew leader.

·         Root cause analysis should be done at each PEP meeting to discuss the incompletion of assignments of the previous week.

·         Incentives schemes should be adopted to further motivate the Last Planner group to release reliable weekly plans.