In the past several years, BIM (Building Information Modeling) and the “lean” approach to improving the way a company conducts its operations have been combined to transform the design and construction of office, industrial and institutional buildings.
This combination represents the ideal approach to increasing efficiency, reducing waste, incorporating best practices, and stimulating collaboration. Finally, real estate can be seen as part of the business solution, not just an overhead expense.
BIM, among other capabilities, offers the ability to develop and represent building designs dynamically in 3-D. While the 3-D aspect is useful and important for those unaccustomed to working with floor plans, it is the real-time manipulation that serves the lean process so well.
The “lean” process improvement concept originally came out of Toyota manufacturing, and was applied to the manufacturing sector. The lean process management philosophy is a way of maximizing customer value while minimizing waste, using fewer resources, and gaining operational efficiencies. Since the late 1980s, lean has been applied to many different businesses in all industries and services. It is not a cost-reduction program (although it can save an organization money), but rather, a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization.
Kaizen Events
Part of a BIM/lean design philosophy includes collaborative sessions with all relevant members of a company’s staff, facilities managers, and executive leadership. By using interactive 3-D visualization technology, a wide variety of layouts can be investigated and critiqued. When the final layout has been resolved, all members of the team are sufficiently involved in the design that discussing extremely minute levels of detail is easy.
Margulies Perruzzi Architects recently completed a project that combined BIM and lean at a large research and development facility. The company’s engineering leadership and the project architects worked together to conceptualize a new process flow throughout the new facility. With a new process and flow defined, they then met together in smaller teams to actually place all the pieces of equipment – the doors, electrical outlets, and overhead cranes – in 3-D, into each of the individual labs. Using BIM, the architects were then able to do a virtual “walk” through the space, simulating the process flow to allow everyone to confirm the coordination between the lean process re-engineering and the design implementation.
To approach lean in a truly holistic fashion, a “Kaizen Event” is held, involving expert facilitators and professional staff to redesign the entire company’s goods or services delivery system. In collaboration with clients, “value-stream maps” are created to understand how a company currently operates. A “future state” value-stream map is then created to incorporate all of the ways to improve the process. Layout improvements – all done with sensitivity to cost – may include:
Improved visual management – the ability to actually see what is going on. Efficiency is increased if people are able to easily and readily have visually connection to the people or resources they need to work with.
Better flow of visitors, staff, product, and electronic communications.
Additional space for expansion.
The lean design team then establishes a set of weighted criteria against which to measure a variety of schemes, and together they manipulate the floor plan so that they can respond best to these requirements. The future stream-map process, coupled with an improved layout, often promises a significantly increased efficiency by reducing wasted time, lost effort, and uncertainty. That is the real value of lean.
All companies are looking for creative ways to function efficiently and effectively. Those responsible for design and construction should encourage lean process discussions, coupled with BIM visualization tools, not just to make construction less costly, but to improve the way processes are performed.
