An MCDM Approach to Lean Tool Implementation for Minimizing Non-Value-Added Activities in the Precast Industry

The construction industry is growing with the shortfall issues of productivity, functionality, and cost. Precast construction has significant potential to address these issues by incorporating lean principles. Lean focuses on enhancing value at every stage of the construction process. By combining these two approaches, the construction industry can effectively tackle these challenges. This research aims to achieve two main objectives: (1). To establish a connection between lean tools and non-value added (NVA) activities, (2). To prioritize these lean tools based on their relevance to major NVA activities. To accomplish this, an extensive review of the literature was conducted to examine the adoption of lean tools in various NVA tasks. A questionnaire survey was then employed to identify the root causes of NVA activities (criteria) and determine the most suitable lean tools for addressing each specific criterion. The findings from multi-criteria decision decision-making (MCDM) analysis highlight that total quality management (TQM) is ranked first in two methods while continuous improvement (CI) ranked first in one method. Comparing all the scenarios, it is observed that 5S and CI have been fluctuating between two and three rankings, and the remaining ranks have very minute changes. Based on all these lean tools are prioritized as TQM > CI > 5S > JIT > VSM > PY.