(Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of California, Berkeley, United States)
Iris D. Tommelein is Professor of Engineering and Project Management, in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California Berkeley. She directs the Project Production Systems Laboratory (P2SL – p2sl.berkeley.edu), a research institute dedicated to developing and deploying knowledge and tools for project management, i.e., to support the delivery of temporary production systems.
Professor Tommelein studies principles and methods of project-based production management for the architecture-engineering-construction (AEC) industry, what is termed Lean Construction. Her pioneering research in Lean Construction includes teaming up with design specialists, general- and specialty contractors, owners and suppliers to increase process and product development performance.
Professor Tommelein is an expert on Lean Construction, site logistics, layout, operations and methods design, materials management, and supply-chain management. Her work involves computer-aided design, planning, scheduling, simulation, and visualization of construction processes; and use of information technology including web-based and sensor-based systems.
Among several major awards, most recently she received the Lean Pioneer Award 2015 from the Lean Construction Institute (LCI), recognizing an individual (or organization) who has moved the design and construction industry forward in embracing and implementing Lean tools and techniques on capital projects.
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Lean Construction emerged in 1993 as a term referring to holistic thinking about construction, considering Transformation, Flow, and Value in unison. Researchers and practitioners in the field think of construction in its broadest sense (e.g., cradle-to-grave projects, project portfolios, supply chains, markets, and the industry more globally) and have been working on shaping a body of knowledge specific to the delivery of project production systems. We have been adopting principles and methods from the Toyota Production System, adapted them to suit project delivery challenges, and further augmented them with existing methods as well as methods newly-developed to suit.The creativity that is going into rethinking construction with Lean mindset is integral to the systems thinking that Lean promotes. In this keynote, I will offer examples of this Lean Thinking that drives creativity, which I see as being part of the continuous improvement process that is so fundamental to Lean.
The creativity that is going into rethinking construction with Lean mindset is integral to the systems thinking that Lean promotes. In this keynote, I will offer examples of this Lean Thinking that drives creativity, which I see as being part of the continuous improvement process that is so fundamental to Lean.