Lean design management using a gamified system

Abstract

Design process, due to its information-and innovation-intensive nature, is highly susceptible to change and thus, waste. This attracted the attention of lean design/construction professionals in the past few years. However, limited, if any, researches have addressed this issue from the human behavior perspective. This research proposes a method that exploits the potential of the Last Planner® System (LPS) in design management. The main contribution of this paper is improving the applicability of the LPS to design processes by incorporating a gamified pay-for-performance system into the normal practice of the LPS. It encourages motivating design engineers by granting them singlepoint, autonomous responsibility to perform their tasks. To this end, the proposed method shifts the focus of design managers away from predicting the workow and chronologies of design tasks to motivate design engineers to eliminate non-value-adding works/time. To bolster the concept and examine the method, it was put into practice by construction design teams. Findings corroborate the efficiency of the method in eliminating the nonvalue-adding works from design processes. The findings are of practical value to consulting firms, especially design team managers who seek to maximize innovation, competency, and quality outcome.