LEAN experiment on the Ghent Rabot site shows lead time can be reduced
On Monday, August 13, Democo kicked off a remarkable LEAN experiment. The goal: to reduce the lead time for finishing an apartment from 30 to 9 days. The project team and the subcontractors exceeded their wildest expectation and finished in only 7.5 days, without compromising on quality. The secret behind this successful experiment: thorough preparation and dialogue.
The experiment on the Rabot site - where WoninGent replaces the existing residential towers with attractive new-build apartments - is part of LEAN working within Democo. With this continuous improvement process, the contractor aims to make customer value as large as possible by eliminating wasted time. For the Rabot site (phase 1a), Democo and its subcontractors already managed to reduce the usual completion time for finishing an apartment from 40 to 30 days. The 131 apartments were finished in 160 working days.
Record attempt
Driven by continuous improvement, the project team took on the challenge of further reducing the lead time in an experiment. “During the project, we and our partners used multi-moment recording to measure how much time was spent on customer value and how much on additional activities – or waste in lean terms. Based on those results, we investigated how we could reduce waste as much as possible and get rid of it in the critical path of production. That exercise brought up the challenge of finishing an apartment in less than 10 days. During the joint planning day, 8.5 days turned out to be realistic,” says William Vander Bracht, LEAN manager at Democo.
The experiment itself started on Monday, August 13. “During the work, the partners indicated that they could shorten this lead time by another 24 hours. The contractors put the finishing touches to the apartment on Wednesday evening and on Thursday morning it was thoroughly cleaned. We beat the clock on a lead time of 7.5 days. The secret behind this short runtime is extensive dialogue between all parties,” adds William Vander Bracht.
No loss of quality
Democo prides itself on the fact that the shorter finishing time had no influence on the quality of the work delivered. “After all, we did not reduce working time, but only the time for actions that do not generate customer value. Consider, for example, the transport of materials to the project site: for this experiment we made sure through detailed preparation that all materials were on site on time and efficiently available. We also set up the planning in such a way that several contractors could work in the apartment simultaneously without interfering with each other. To this end, we divided the apartment into several work zones. A schedule up to 15 minutes was drawn up for each zone. We also noticed that by working simultaneously, contractors actually took each other's work more into account,” explains General Manager Frederik Bijnens.
Useful lessons
The successful experiment does not mean that Democo will now deliver each apartment in 7.5 days. “For this experiment, there was continuous follow-up and permanent monitoring of the work. This isn’t possible on most sites. But we have learned meaningful lessons to optimize our LEAN way of working together and to still significantly shorten finishing times,” concludes William Vander Bracht.
