Last Planner System and the Role of Social Interaction: A Social Network Analysis Perspective
Creators: Eivazi Ziaei, Parastoo
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

<p>Lean construction is a new project management method that focuses on increasing quality and value and, by contrast, decreasing any type of waste. Lean management consists of some principles and concepts that have to be noticed to implement effective Lean management and take advantage of it. Based on the lean concepts and principles, behaviour and culture must be implemented properly to achieve successful lean management. The LPS has been used to increase the reliability of production planning and control. However, a useful health check assessment is needed to understand the level of lean maturity and the implementation level of the last planner system, which is a production planning and control method in lean construction. <br>
 Implementing the last planner system (LPS) requires effective communication to collaborate and exchange information. There are a lot of breakdowns in people’s communication and information transparency which may cause some planning issues, so to address this concern, there is a need to study the interaction between parties and find the gap to improve the communication and information flow. Besides the literature review, a pilot case study has been chosen to investigate the level of lean in the project and find room to improve weaknesses. <br>
A lean survey was prepared based on the lean success factors. After survey validation by lean experts, the survey was conducted. The lean success factors survey shows that the LPS, communication and collaboration levels are lower than other success factors. In addition, the gathered data from the planning software showed that the Percent Planned Complete (PPC) is low. Therefore, the results prove that the low PPC occurred because of a lack of communication and collaboration and the unhealthy LPS. So, a pilot case study also shows the need for study teams’ communication and information transparency. <br>
This study aims to introduce an LPS and social interaction framework to understand the interaction structure, the level of maturity of the lean behaviour, and the effectiveness of the last planner system. Design Science Research (DSR) methodology has been implemented in this research to propose a framework to assess the LPS and social health check. The developed framework includes 1) identifying the LPS success factors, 2) conducting two surveys, 3) gathering LPS metrics, 4) measuring the LPS implementation level, 5) measuring the social network metrics, 6) evaluating team performance, 7) lessons learned and identifying strength and weaknesses.<br>
The LPS survey was designed based on the LPS success factors. The factors have been identified through literature review and interviewing academic and professional experts to prepare the survey. In addition, a social network analysis survey was designed to determine the team members&#39; relationships. After preparing the surveys, three primary case studies have been selected to test the proposed framework and examine the level of LPS implementation and parties’ interaction. <br>
Team interaction can be analyzed by Social Network Analysis (SNA) and taking advantage of Gephi software to study the metrics and the outcomes. After analyzing the network and its structure, the correlation test was conducted to find the relationship between SNA and LPS metrics. The results prove that 1) the lookahead planning network has significant importance in impacting PPC, and 2) there is a positive correlation between Graph Density and PPC and a negative correlation between Average Path Length and PPC, which means a well-connected network with faster interaction will have a higher PPC. Finally, a new network structure has been suggested to improve the Graph Density and Average Pathlength, which leads to improving the lookahead planning and having a high PPC.</p>