THE LAST PLANNER® SYSTEM PATH CLEARING APPROACH IN ACTION: A CASE STUDY

The “Last Planner® System” (LPS) is commonly viewed as the foundation of Lean Project Delivery. It is increasingly used in certain parts of the globe. However, LPS implementation often fades off due to issues reported at organisational, project and external levels. The LPS Path Clearing Approach (PCA) offers an antidote to these issues. The goal of this paper is to outline how the LPS-PCA helped restart a stalled implementation of the LPS through a “shallow and wide” organisational approach rather than a more traditional “narrow and deep” project approach. The LPS-PCA in action is documented within an on-going UK case study organisation. Action and covert research methods were used to introduce LPS principles, thinking and language without attributing them to LPS in response to resistance to the actual LPS. The 15 step actions within the LPS-PCA are expanded from a past, current and future state perspective. The study found that the LPS-PCA’s 15 step actions were useful as a benchmark to continuously remove constraints that blocked the implementation of the LPS. In summary, the use of the LPSPCA is recommended before, during and after organisations engage with LPS Consultants if organisations are serious about sustaining the implementation of the LPS

A Dynamic Knowledge Management Framework for the High Value Manufacturing Industry

Dynamic Knowledge Management (KM) is a combination of cultural and technological factors, including the cultural factors of people and their motivations, technological factors of content and infrastructure and, where these both come together, interface factors. In this paper a Dynamic KM framework is described in the context of employees being motivated to create profit for their company through product development in high value manufacturing. It is reported how the framework was discussed during a meeting of the collaborating company’s (BAE Systems) project stakeholders. Participants agreed the framework would have most benefit at the start of the product lifecycle before key decisions were made. The framework has been designed to support organisational learning and to reward employees that improve the position of the company in the market place

From Offshore Operation to Onshore Simulator: Using Visualized Ethnographic Outcomes to Work with Systems Developers

This paper focuses on the process of translating insights from a Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)-based study, conducted on a vessel at sea, into a model that can assist systems developers working with simulators, which are used by vessel operators for training purposes on land. That is, the empirical study at sea brought about rich insights into cooperation, which is important for systems developers to know about and consider in their designs. In the paper, we establish a model that primarily consists of a ‘computational artifact’. The model is designed to support researchers working with systems developers. Drawing on marine examples, we focus on the translation process and investigate how the model serves to visualize work activities; how it addresses relations between technical and computational artifacts, as well as between functions in technical systems and functionalities in cooperative systems. In turn, we link design back to fieldwork studies