LEAN: The Great Leveller; Integrity promotes productivity.

The Fundamental Principles of Lean Thinking:

The concept of Lean developed from the concept introduced by Krafick in the 1980s (a management policy or a way of thinking) to an independent theory (Lean Theory) introduced by Womack in his book “Lean Thinking”. In his theory Womack defined Lean Thinking’s five main principles as follows (Womack and Jones, 1966):

1. Principle 1: Value

The initial point of Lean Thinking is to specify customer value. However, the value is not easy to specify because it is different from one customer to another, and depends on the conditions and image of the product that he/she wants, whether it is material like goods or in kind like services, whether the image is related to price or the delivery time, etc. Womack emphasized that what defines the value is the “ultimate consumer based on his requirements in terms of what specific good or services he needs at a specific price and time”.
Lean’s philosophy starts from the value principle by defining non-add-value activities and processes, then working on eliminating them; consequently, this process is in the interest of value and increases add-value.

2. Principle 2: Value Stream

After specifying the value, the second step is defined, including all actions and activities (including value-add and non-add-value) required to deliver the product to the customer (either goods or services). Womack emphasized the fact that specifying the value stream is not limited to production only, but should also include the organization itself with its supply chain from the design phase to sourcing raw material through to delivery. Specifically, this point shows that Lean Thinking established quite a different approach that seeks “value” and takes into consideration a product’s journey from start to end, based on the philosophy of the organization producing it. Therefore, Gehbauer (2012) believes that “Lean is not mass production, and not trade; it is a third form of the organization of a production system.”

3. Principle 3: Flow

After following the first and the second steps, where value has been specified and accordingly the add-value and non-add-value (value stream) has been defined, the third step is to make the value-creating actions flow in the process of production. Such flow can be achieved by removal of unwanted steps and associated wastes within process (during production).

4. Principle 4: Pull

After specifying the value, identifying it and creating the flow of it, the features of Lean start to appear in the next step (the fourth step), which is the pull principle in a production process. Pull, according to Womack, means nobody produces any product prior to a previous order. Womack calls the successor in this process a “customer”, so the term “customer” is used in a wider sense. Not only does it refer to the customer who uses the product after its production, but also it refers to many customers within the production process until it reaches the final customer who is the end user.
Applying this concept in the production process means a new view on the process, moving it from the Push principle (i.e. from beginning to end) to the Pull principle (i.e. from end to beginning). This principle is what makes focusing on “Customer Value” possible. Here, the requirements of the customer in the right time come directly from him/her. Womack refers to this process as “pull the value by customer” whether the customer is an “internal customer” who participates in the production process or an “end customer” who uses the product later or the product was produced for him/her.

5. Principle 5: Perfection

After specifying the value, identifying it, creating the flow of it based on the pull principle, the last step of Lean thinking, i.e. the fifth principle, is achieving perfection. “Perfection” in Lean Thinking differs from the generally known and perceived perfection in many organizations in different industries. This perfection in Lean Thinking contains special features:
I. First, the way to achieve it: one can achieve it by “radical improvement”; however, in Lean, the right way to achieve it is through “continuous improvement”.
II. Second, Lean not only describes perfection but also brings it to existence. Perfection in Lean is seeking to reduce the effect, time, space, cost and mistakes associated with the production process to be as close as possible to the customer’s needs and desires.

The root causes of corruption are:
1. Lack of transparency
2. Lack of accountability
3. Lack of integrity
• On an addition to the developed principles, the research benchmarked the best practices introduced by many international organizations, especially GIACC, TI, ISO and FIDIC to apply them as effective countermeasures to eliminate and prevent corruption waste.
• However integrity, transparency and accountability form the Lean’s immune system against corruption and all other tools and techniques of the toolkit should be based on

• Corruption is a core waste in Lean Construction: considering corruption as a type of waste in Lean Construction opens the way to defining the root causes of corruption from Lean Construction’s point of view as shown in Figure 4.
• Integrity should be a main principle in Lean Construction: since transparency and accountability are existing principles in Lean, the research adds the “integrity” principle as “honoring one’s word”. Through the case study, it was proven that the integrity principle could be implemented in Lean, i.e. into the Last Planner System (LPS) specifically.