Variants of Swedish lean construction practices reported in research: systematic literature review and critical analysis

Journal article, 2021

Identifying lean construction (LC) practice variants can facilitate LC benchmarking and adoption, provided that national institutional influences on LC practices are acknowledged. Given that motivation, this study contributes to identifying LC practice variants in Sweden — therefore mapping that context, but also offering a research template to extrapolate in other construction sectors and thus aid in developing a versatile understanding of LC practices. Methodologically, a systematic literature review captures the related empirical studies, and their themes (industrialized or conventional construction), process coverage (design, production, partnering and stakeholder collaboration, planning, strategy, supply chain), paradigms (systems theory, business economics, behaviorism, interpretivism), and content, are analyzed. Through this analysis, the variants of industrialized construction, production processes, production strategy, design, planning, and logistics and supply chain, were derived — largely indicating that Swedish LC practices primarily focus on improving technical process parameters. But aside such improvements, subpar results of Swedish LC practices have also been observed — which can mean that besides processes, the effect of LC on organizational needs, culture, value streams, development, growth, and human interaction, should be further investigated.