This paper presents work aimed at improved organization and performance of production in housing renovation projects. The purpose is to explore and demonstrate the potential of lean work organization and industrialized product technology to improve workflow and productive time. The research included selected case studies that have been found to implement lean work organization and industrialized product technology in an experimental setting. Adjustments to the work organization and construction technology have been implemented on site. The effects of the adjustments have been measured and were reviewed with operatives and managers. The data have been collected and analyzed, in comparison to traditional settings. Two projects were studied. The first case implied am application of lean work organization in which labor was reorganized redistributing and balancing operations among operatives of different trades. In the second case industrialized solution for prefabricated installation of prefabricated roofs. In both cases the labor productivity increased substantially compared to traditional situations. Although the limited number of cases, both situations appeared to be representative for other housing projects. This has led to conclusions extrapolated from both cases applicable to other projects, and contribution to the knowledge to improve production in construction. Vrijhoef, R. (2016). “Effects of Lean Work Organization and Industrialization on Workflow and Productive Time in Housing Renovation Projects.” In: Proc. 24 th Ann. Conf. of the Int’l. Group for Lean Construction, Boston, MA, USA, sect.2 pp. 63–72. Available at: .
MULTIFILE
Productivity in construction is relatively low compared to other industries. This is particularly true for labour productivity. Problems that contribute to low labour productivity are often related to unorganised workspace, and inefficient organisation of work, materials and equipment. In terms of time use, site workers spend time on various activities including installing, waiting, walking etc. In lean production terms time use should be value adding and not wasteful or non-value adding. The study reported in this paper has endeavoured to measure the time use and movement applying an automated data system. The case study reflected a limited application to a specific kind of activity, namely doors installation. The study investigated time use and movements based on interviews and on automated detection of workforce. The interviews gave insights in the time build-up of work and value-added time use per day. The automated tracking indicated time intervals and uninterrupted presence of site workers on work locations giving indications of value adding time. The time measurements of the study enable comparison of time use categories of site workers. The study showed the data system calculated the same amounts of productive and value adding time one would expect based on the organisation and characteristics of the work. However, the discussion of the results underlined that the particular characteristics of individual projects and types of team work organisation may well have an impact on productivity levels of workers. More application and comparative studies of projects and further development and extension of the automated data system should be helpful.
LINK
We provide greater theoretical precision to the concept of productive opportunities of Penrose. We show firm emergence as a recursive cycle of changing productive opportunities. We show how those opportunitiesresult from the technological base of the firm and are associated with the particular characteristics of the technology.We also show how productive opportunities require the assembly of different internal and externalresources, and therefore partners. We address explicitly how the firm and its potential partners perceive uncertainty and single out the different mechanisms used by the firm to address uncertainty—envisioning, pooling, and staging—to secure resources from external partners and exploit the identified productive opportunities in a timely manner.
DOCUMENT
This paper studies the productive role of innovation in organisations. Using the post-structuralist insight that innovation is an open concept that can become performative, we shift the emphasis from analysing innovations themselves to analysing how the concept of innovation affects the organisational practices through which it acquires meaning. Deploying this framework, we studied the development of an innovation unit within TUI, a corporate tour operator. We found that actors interpreted innovation in different ways and that initially the innovation unit was considered a failure. The subsequent dramatisation of this failure resulted in a new version of this innovation unit that strengthened established actors and institutions within the organisation. Our study shows how the use of the concept of innovation in an organisation can both stimulate and hamper its innovativeness. Addressing this paradox requires sensitivity to the concept's productive role and evaluations of innovation that look beyond accomplished results.
DOCUMENT
from the paper: "This paper presents a research endeavouring to model site work in a 4D BIM model. Next simulations are performed with this model in 5 scenarios including specific interventions in work organisation, notably changing positons of facilities for site workers. A case study has been done in a construction project in the Netherlands. The research has showed the possibility to model time use of site workers in 4D BIM. Next the research has showed potential to perform and calculate specific interventions in the model, and prospect realistic changes in productive time use as a result."
DOCUMENT
Deze publicatie is een voortvloeisel van het Time line Gallery project. In dit project bundelden ontwerpbureau DesignArbeid, het lectoraat Image in Context van Academy Minerva en kunstruimte Sign de krachten om jonge kunstenaars in staat te stellen om in door henzelf gevormde teams de mogelijkheden van de publieke ruimte begin 21 eeuw te onderzoeken en zichtbaar te maken. De straat als galery waarin projecten in een tijdslijn na elkaar eigen vormen van counter public space (Klug ..) kunnen realiseren. De kunstenaars zetten zich uiteen met actuele kwesties waarvoor nieuwe vormen van uitwisseling en participatie werden ontwikkeld: de klimaatcrisis tastbaar in het stijgende water, de rol van de vrouw binnen de studentenvereniging, vervreemding in het publiek domein, ons koloniaal verleden zichtbaar in onze publieke ruimte, propaganda achter grote stadsevents, het gemak waarmee ons fakenews op de mouw gespeld kan worden en de wijze waarop publiek en privaat domein in elkaar overlopen.De vraag die voor ons allen leidend is: Hoe kunnen kunstenaars en ontwerpers interventies doen die eraan bijdragen dat we als autonoom denkende mensen weer verbinding krijgen met wat Bruno Latour (2019) het Aardse noemt. Het Aardse als zijnde een concept dat ons helpt om de richting aan te geven waarheen we ons moeten bewegen in een bewustzijn dat de wereld niet meer bestaat uit een omgeving waar mensen zich in bevinden, maar uit een krachtenveld, een ecologie, waar we onderdeel van zijn. De onderzoekers van het lectoraat zoeken de conceptuele invalshoeken die ons helpen om zichtbaar te maken welke mogelijkheden de kunst heeft om het hoofd te bieden aan de vele vormen van propaganda en disciplinering in het begin van de 21 e eeuw die dit onmogelijk willen maken. Daarom vindt u in deze publicatie naast een schets van de verschillende interventies die de deelnemende kunstenaars ontwikkelden, ook de verschillende conceptuele perspectieven waar de onderzoekers uit het lectoraat mee werken.De hier gepresenteerde artistieke praktijken zijn een moment in de ontwikkeling van de kunstenaars, het gevolg van een scala aan ontmoetingen die eraan vooraf zijn gegaan en de consekwentie van een dynamiek die ze op een geven moment met elkaar in gang hebben durven zetten. Zonder de moed tot handelen was er nooit iets gebeurd. De gepresenteerde concepten zijn de diepe gronden waar een onderzoeker pas na verloop van tijd op durft te gaan bouwen. Deze concepten kunnen iets teweegbrengen. In de ontmoetingen kan het concept zich gronden en verbreden en kunnen de artistieke praktijken nieuwe betekenislagen krijgen. Samen helpen ze ons reflecteren op de nieuwe rollen van kunstenaars en ontwerpers in de openbare ruimte als publiek domein.
DOCUMENT
Pupils with problem behaviours are challenging teachers as well as they are a challenge to teachers to find a way to teach them what curricula prescribe. Especially middle school teachers and those working in schools for special education are con-fronted with pupils with behavioural problems. There, teachers experience hard classes and find it difficult to fit classroom management with the pupils needs. In this paper we focus on two questions: is pullout an effective treatment to handle problem behaviour? do special classes have advantages for pupils who were pulled out or not? First we present a theoretical framework about pullout and we explicit our expectations. Then we describe the methods of our research in schools for special educa-tion during two months for students (N=759) when pulled out. We examined the reason of pulling out and the interactions during the process outside the classroom and the return. Because teachers noticed date and time of the removal, it was possible to use survival analysis to show the effects of the treatment. We found that pullout occurs under quite different circumstances, so the treatment integrity is a problem because deficiency of the intervention leads to repeated pullout. The data also showed that special classes for pupils who are pulled out seem to trigger and/or in-tensify the process itself. So, we conclude that these classes have a contra-productive effect.
DOCUMENT
This paper presents an overview of studies that explore the impact of digital signage, environmental design and the use of background music on time perception and customer experience, thus exploring the psychological value of time.
LINK
Twitter timelines are increasingly populated with brand tweets that are linked to public events, a practice that is also known as real-time marketing (RTM). In two studies, we examine whether RTM is an effective strategy to boost sharing behavior, and if so, what event- and content-related characteristics are likely to contribute to its effectiveness. A content analysis of brand tweets from Nielsen’s top-100 advertisers (n=1500) shows that not all events are equally effective. RTM is only a more effective strategy (vs. no real-time marketing), when brand messages are linked with unpredictable events but not when brand messages are linked with predictable events. In a follow-up study, we examined what content characteristics improve the shareability of predictable RTM messages. A content analysis of RTM messages (n=143) from the Forbes top-100 brands showed that predictable events yield more retweets when the event is visually integrated in the brand tweet (vs. not visually integrated). The presence of event-driven hashtags did not lead to more retweets. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
DOCUMENT
We use a longitudinal examination of the production of a complex vessel to develop theory concerning operational flexibility behaviors within interorganizational projects. We find that operational flexibility behaviors are enabled by trust between project participants, sense of urgency, and the availability of resources. These enablers are in turn positively influenced by positive experiences in previous interactions (“shadow of the past”) and expectations of possible future collaboration (“shadow of the future”), the temporary nature of interorganizational projects and slack in project tasks, respectively. The positive effect of enablers on operational flexibility is weakened by the time pressure project participants experience. The latter is also caused by the temporariness of interorganizational projects. Based on our findings, we propose that the different time dimensions play a crucial role in explaining flexibility behaviors in interorganizational projects: the temporariness that is an essential characteristic of interorganizational projects has two potentially opposite effects on the behavior of its participants, and we argue that shadows of the past and future play a decisive role in which of the two effects will dominate. The theoretical framework based on our case study suggests that the temporariness of interorganizational projects is indeed important—as acknowledged in the literature—but that its effect is contingent on shadows of past and future.
LINK
