The Combination of Last Planner System and Location-Based Management System

Research Question: The Last Planner System (LPS) and Location-Based Management System (LBMS) both aim to achieve the lean goals of decreasing waste, increasing productivity and decreasing variability. Q1: How to best link these two systems together to achieve better project performance? Q2: can the LBMS control mechanisms be integrated with LPS? Q3: Can phase pull scheduling be integrated with LBMS? Purpose: The purpose of this research is to develop a process and best practices to combine the benefits of LPS and LBMS. Research Method: Skanska Finland has used LPS and LBMS together. Because the planning and controlling methods in different industries can vary, a series of workshops was conducted at a hospital project on the US West Coast, and three other US companies were interviewed, to discover the factors specific to industries where activity-based scheduling systems dominate. These three sources of information were combined to the latest case study results on the stand-alone use of LBMS and LPS. Findings: The paper proposes processes to integrate LPS and LBMS in pre-bid master scheduling, pull phase scheduling, look-ahead scheduling, and weekly planning. Limitations: The proposed processes need to be tested in practice. Implications: The hypotheses for future research are that after implementing the proposed process, H1: schedule conformance will improve, H2: project durations will shrink, H3: productivity will increase, and H4: cascading delay chains will show a decrease. Value for practitioners: General Contractors or Construction Managers can begin to use the proposed processes in order to decrease durations and increase productivity.