For the past several decades, manufacturing has led the way by adopting technology and digitizing work processes to increase productivity. Meanwhile, over the past twenty years, the global average value added per hour in the E&C industry has grown roughly a quarter of the rate of manufacturing.
McKinsey recently published an article co-authored by myself and our Aconex Founder and CEO Leigh Jasper discussing project performance optimization in the E&C industry. We explore ways to reduce variability, or better yet—capitalize on variability to yield better results. Our article explains how to follow DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) as a useful data-driven improvement technique to increase productivity- something that manufacturing has been leveraging for a long time. Now it’s the E&C industry’s turn to shine.
With pre-fabrication, modular design, BIM, and mass production, construction is beginning to resemble manufacturing more closely than ever before. Some might argue that construction is really a manufacturing process; providing ample reasons to apply manufacturing best practices to an industry that’s flat-lined in terms of productivity.
