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The application of lean principles in construction project management is paramount for achieving optimal efficiency and minimizing waste. This study provides a comprehensive exploration of the innovative Big Room concept, serving as a collaborative hub where project stakeholders converge to streamline design and construction processes. Through a detailed examination of a real-life case study, we meticulously analyze the effectiveness, advantages, and obstacles encountered during the implementation of the Big Room methodology throughout the project lifecycle. By offering profound insights and practical recommendations, this research aims to enlighten and empower lean construction practitioners striving for excellence in project management.

Xia Wang, Yanhua Liu Department of Nursing, Tianjin Beichen Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Tianjin, 300400, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Yanhua Liu, Email Liuyh1017@126.comBackground: Although the “ 6S” management was shown to improve the work efficiency and quality of enterprises, the significance of lean “ 6S” combined with visual management in clinical nursing settings has not yet been reported.Objective: This study aimed to explore the effect of lean “ 6S” combined with visual management mode on clinical nursing quality.Methods: From June 2019, the “ 6S” combined with visual management mode was implemented in Tianjin Beichen Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital. The satisfaction of nurses in the ward, hand-over items and warehouse inventory time, ICU rescue efficiency, and the incidence of nursing adverse events before and after the implementation of the mode were compared.Results: Implementation of the visual and “ 6S” management mode led to significantly higher satisfaction of nurses in the ward compared to pre-implementation. Further, a significant decrease was observed in hand-over items and warehouse inventory time, ICU rescue efficiency, and the incidence of adverse nursing events (P< 0.05).Conclusion: The visual and “ 6S” management mode in the ward could significantly improve the quality of clinical nursing management and the satisfaction of medical staffs. This study is a single-centre prospective study, so some selection bias is inevitable. Future multicentre, long-term randomized clinical trials are needed to provide more evidence that this method can benefit nursing practice.Keywords: “ 6S” management, visual management, nursing, intensive care unit, rescue, safety, inventory time, satisfaction

Process improvement through cellular manufacturing, engineering, and management (CEM) is largely dated and neglected. This article aims at rejuvenating the topic through re-conceptualization in the form of twelve principles of workcell design, operation, and management, plus six corollary principles. An assessment model, based on the twelve principles is suggested for planning and evaluating proposed or operational CEM cases. Much of the attendant research emerges from published case studies, along with authors’ own extensive, on-site visitations and analyses. Collectively, an intent to present rationale for considering and treating the workcell/cellular construct as among the more significant concepts/methodologies within the field of manufacturing/engineering/production management.

Workers play a superior role in the production process because they are responsible for its proper functioning (e.g. process efficiency, quality, technical condition of usage machines), and are also responsible for safety at work. The issue of work safety should be a crucial factor in the process of introducing changes in the company. The introduced changes should take into account safe working conditions and reduce the number of potential accidents, therefore employers should implement solutions aimed at improving work safety. One of the tools that can affect work safety is visual management (VM). The use of various forms of VM enables immediate response to emerging problems, which may translate into an increase in employees' awareness of health and safety issues. The article presents the possibilities of using of visual management tools in manufacturing companies in terms of improving work safety. The proposed solutions can be used by enterprises that register accidents at work and take actions to increase employees' awareness of occupational safety and health (OSH).

With the continuous evolution and advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), network technologies have witnessed substantial improvements. Against the backdrop of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 pandemic, wireless classrooms have emerged as a significant modality for education. This study delves into the integration mechanisms and methodologies of AI-based wireless classrooms across diverse educational institutions. Building upon previous accomplishments, this work elucidates the fundamental aspects of AI, explicates the underpinnings of wireless classrooms, and analyzes pertinent components. Additionally, the study summarizes the elements of audience engagement in the context of wireless networks. The effectiveness of wireless classrooms is assessed through a questionnaire survey administered to students, exploring their perceptions and experiences in independent learning. Furthermore, by incorporating relevant classroom knowledge and employing a well-structured management mechanism, wireless classrooms exhibit distinct advantages over traditional classroom setups, fostering visual feedback, bolstering students’ independent learning capabilities, and elevating the overall quality of modern teaching.

The issue of ensuring work safety during the use of machines plays a key role due to the recorded accident events, the source of which are the machines in use. In the scope of reducing the risk associated with machines, particular attention should be paid to the threats, as well as solutions allowing to limit their negative impact on the operator. The study presents the possibility of using visual management (VM) as a form of information transfer that allows to meet the requirements set out in legal regulations, as well as reduce the risk of accidents. The machines in question were assessed for the possibility of using various forms of visual management to reduce the risk of accidents. The investigations were also supplemented with an analysis of accident statistics to present the importance of using visual management in improving the safety of machine operators' work. The conducted analyzes allowed to determine the direction of activities in the use of various forms of visual management aimed at improving the safety of machine operators.

This paper presents a sub-study on participatory design in visual management (VM), bracketed from a larger case study. In this case, VM refers to the recurrent meetings when managers and co-workers use dashboards (VM boards) to continuously organize work activities and performances and contribute to the ongoing development and improvements within the organization. The study focuses on when the managers and co-workers are participating in the process of designing and visualizing work-related information regarding workload for future VM boards. This paper emphasizes collaborative workshops and the creation of moodboards as participatory methods, and the application of theories of metaphorical thinking and conceptual and visual metaphors. The findings show that participants perceive the visual output they create metaphorically, in this case, the moodboards. Such visual outputs represent conceptual and visual metaphors that evoke the participants’ sharing of core concepts and an establishment of stories related to the information to be designed. In turn, the metaphors and the storytelling stress desires, visions, objectives, and themes, besides workplace atmospheres, norms, and values governing the workplace. This understanding translates to shared work experiences where conceptual and visual thinking impact how work teams develop work-related information on VM boards together.

There are various Lean tools available to increase the value of construction projects, this paper mainly talks about the Visual Management tools that help in improving the efficiency and value of the construction project. The methodology adopted for the study is to collect the data using structured survey on the usefulness and importance of 12 lean tool and techniques identified from the literature review. A five point likert scale have been used for collection of data from pan India basis. A total of 153 valid response were received and analysed using Excel spread sheets and SPSS 23 software. Reliability analysis, relative importance index, cluster analysis were performed on the data collected. The findings of the study concludes that the most significant and important lean tool and techniques were Big rooms, 5S, LPS, and BIM having a RII value of 92%, 91%, 90%, and 88% respectively.

The multitude of concepts and methods of management and control related to the word “visual” in the area of production and quality management may cause difficulties with their perception, proper understanding and use of these terms by researchers from various backgrounds (not necessarily related to production) and countries, including Poland. In particular, the noticed inaccuracies in the use of terms with the word “visual” concern such terms as visual: management, control, inspection, and testing, where, for example, in the Polish language the first three different terms in English are named with the same phrase, which sometimes causes some confusion. The aim of the article was an attempt to distinguish, sometimes “troublesome” definitions, to indicate the area of their application, to define possible relations between them, which is a peculiar novelty. The article is an analysis of the literature related to these concepts, systematizes the types of visual concepts and methods in the area of production and quality. It defines in what context the indicated terms should be used by researchers and what is the relationship between them, and under what conditions they can be used separately or jointly. The article is an attempt to indicating and analysis of the interrelation between concepts in which the word “visual” appears concerning production practice. Concepts visual: management, control, inspection, and testing, as the author proves in the article, they should be translated into English with due diligence, due to the differences between them. It has been shown that there is a strong relationship between type definition pairs as visual management & visual control and visual inspection & visual testing, where it is not a mistake to use them interchangeably, and cases, where all these concepts can intertwine, are also given.

This article studies the visual management of college assets under the changing environment of the Internet of Things, uses virtual reality technology to discuss the mechanism of its visualization, and studies the technical selection from the aspects of system architecture, database, and message middleware to provide reliable colleges and universities asset management, provide a complete authority distribution management mechanism, have a safe and reliable data storage mechanism and good scalability. And according to this goal, the overall architecture of the system is designed. Under this architecture, the main modules of the college asset management system divided into college asset information management, information release management, and other modules. To meet these functional modules, related diagrams are designed. The diagram creates a data table corresponding to it. The emphasis is on the systematic analysis of system performance and uses case modeling, static model, and dynamic model based on UML. The overall design of a three-tier logical structure including presentation layer, business logic layer, and data access layer, six functional modules including business process management, platform visualization management, application management, data storage, data processing, and data asset security control. Using the MySQL database and the database design method based on the E-R model, the definition of data entities was completed and the table structure design was carried out. It proved that the functions of the platform are in line with actual needs, and the performance can also meet the business requirements of the visualized management of college assets. It can manage data assets well and has high practical application value.

This study aims to identify the degree to which the principals of public secondary schools in Jordan practice visual management from the teachers' point of view. To achieve the objectives of the study, a descriptive survey method was used. For this purpose, a questionnaire consisting of (49) items was developed and divided into three areas: work rules, diagnosis, and eliminating waste. After verifying the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, it was distributed to a random sample of (375) individuals in the second semester of the academic year (2019-2020). The results of the study showed that the degree of school principals' practice of visual management from the teachers' point of view was moderate. The results also showed the presence of statistically significant differences in the degree of school principals' practice of visual management due to gender in favor of females, and to experience in favor of those with experience of ten years or more. Based on the findings, the researcher recommends that the Ministry of Education in Jordan hold training courses for school principals in order to familiarize them with the issue of visual management to be applied in their schools because of its great importance in developing school administration.

The construction industry is undergoing a digital transformation, with the goal of developing long-term solutions that promote construction companies’ alignment with market demands and that empower them to reduce production losses as much as possible. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate a gamified model for disseminating production information in the construction industry using visual management. This was a qualitative exploratory study that employed the Design Science methodology and the Design Science Research method. The model was designed, developed, and evaluated by 35 people, including 10 off-site users who focused on usability, user experience, and model promotability, 15 engineers, and 10 workers who considered user experience and promotability. Employees and managers thought the model was excellent, while outside users thought it was good. Furthermore, the evaluators made suggestions for improvements aimed at achieving excellence. We conclude that the proposed model improves production information dissemination in construction by considering the target audience’s digital inclusion and knowledge diffusion within work teams.

Space is a construction resource not to be overlooked during project scheduling, production planning, and control. When space use over time is not planned, trades may get stacked in areas of the jobsite that are labor intensive, which may hamper productivity and cause safety concerns. Augmenting traditional scheduling representations, spatiotemporal modeling in construction considers both space and time to depict ongoing construction work. This paper presents a simple space scheduling program called LoSite that helps workers involved in doing the work visualize the work schedule, facilitates production control, and fosters transparency in daily coordination of work space among trades. LoSite was implemented in Microsoft Excel. The researchers prototyped, deployed, and tested the space scheduling program to visualize construction work being done during the interiors phase of an open-space office building. Successes of the program as well as limitations to its full adoption by the team are discussed in this paper. LoSite delivers proof-of-concept that space-use visualization, even on a large-scale project, can be accomplished effectively using software that is readily available and familiar to many people.

The technologies of Industry 4.0 provide an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of Visual Management in manufacturing. The opportunity of improvement is twofold. From one side, Visual Management theory and practice can inspire the design of new software tools suitable for Industry 4.0; on the other side, the technology of Industry 4.0 can be used to increase the effectiveness of visual software tools. The paper first explores how the theoretical result on Visual Management can be used as a guideline to improve human-computer interaction, then a methodology is proposed for the design of visual patterns for manufacturing. Four visual patterns are presented that contribute to the solution of problems frequently encountered in discrete manufacturing industries; these patterns help to solve planning and control problems thus providing support to various management functions. Positive implications of this research concern people engagement and empowerment as well as improved problem solving, decision-making and management of manufacturing processes.

Purpose: This study comprised two main goals. The first goal demonstrates how LT (Lean Tools) allows the highest impact during the implementation phase.The second goal consisted of introducing procedure changes based on the Management of Human Resources through Lean Leadership tool. The target for these two objectives is to achieve an increase of 5% in machine occupancy rate and a reduction of 10% regarding the costs of defective products per hour. Methodology/Approach: The research methodology is a Action-Research/Research-Action developed by Professor Kurt Lewin of MIT that goes through cycles of five stages: Diagnosis; Planning; Implementation; Evaluation, Conclusions. Findings: Regarding the two objectives above mentioned, it was observed an increase of 8.5% in machine occupancy rate and a reduction of 27.9% regarding the costs per hour of defective products. It was created an additional motivation in the employees and very satisfying results in every production. Research Limitation/implication: The study is limited to a Portuguese Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) in the metalworking sector. Originality/Value of paper: Lean tools can be rapidly and easily implemented and quickly understood by the workers. With that implementation, the occupation of the machines has increased and the defects and their costs have decreased, so the added value grows.

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is one of the ways to ensure efficient production processes. TPM is primarily associated with the management of maintenance of production equipment. This article deals with the possible implementation of total productive maintenance in other field of maintenance of working means, and it the maintenance of preparations. Experience from practice shows that TPM approaches may be suitable for the maintenance management in this field. In this article are stated the conclusions drawn from the implementation of the principles of TPM in a concrete enterprise having available about 14,400 preparations.

The main purpose of this paper was to introduce procedural changes based on a type of human resources management tool using Lean Leadership (LL). We sought to determine which Lean Tools (LTs) are able to promote a rapid impact on a company; namely, we aimed to determine which LTs are able to facilitate fast and positive results for companies after their implementation, thus allowing for quick wins. This study was conducted at a medium-sized Portuguese company in the metalworking sector. Results were assessed from two surveys (involving 17 people) regarding perceptions of employee awareness in the machining area for Quality, Maintenance/Equipment, Process/Products, Leadership/Management by Objectives, and Trust and Training. The surveys were conducted at the beginning of the study and at the end of a quarterly period. LTs were used over a period of three months, thus enabling changes to the company’s manufacturing processes which could lead to improved organization, orientation, consistency and viability. Three months were considered an adequate time period to measure whether the tools were effective in the production of quick wins or not. LL allowed for greater awareness of the importance of LTs, the most important feature of which is the aggregation of all of the employees’ energies, which culminates in better operational efficiency and an increase in the employees’ overall positive perceptions of their company’s principles and mindset. The introduction of LL, as well as the implementation of 10 LTs, which are considered to be Quick-Win Tools, enabled employees to improve their perceptions of their company by 6.1%. Lean tools can be implemented quickly and are easily understood by their intended users. These benefits provide additional motivation for their use and for the achievement of highly satisfactory operating results across production areas. This study aims to identify which lean tools allow companies to obtain benefits/gains quickly. This outcome is the main contribution of this study to the scientific community and to companies. A Quick Win means a rapid improvement in a short period of time. As such, lean tools that provide Quick Wins also contribute to economic development. Due to the restricted time period imposed by the main purpose of this study, statistical analysis of the results was unfeasible.

Applying lean approaches in office areas can lead to performance improvements and other benefits as achieved in traditional manufacturing environments. The intangibility of office operations may appear as a major difficulty for lean implementations but in fact the benefits achievable are as important as the ones achieved in manufacturing environments. This paper reports a successful case of lean office implementation in a public sector organization giving emphasis to its major performance improvements. Lead times were greatly reduced to the most important office processes as well as achieving good improvements in productivity. Starting the lean office implementation with process mapping was very effective in creating rapid results and as a consequence more motivation and involvement of everyone. On the other hand, a good side effect achieved from this lean office case was the generation of a common culture among all teams and also a much easier integration between all different teams.

When speaking about LEAN, people immediately think about Toyota and its continuous success. Accordingly, many companies have tried to follow its model: the TPS (Toyota Production System) or the LEAN model, based on it. However, few ones have achieved it. We think the book «The Toyota way» gives the answer through fourteen principles that we are commenting in this article.