Journal of Project Production Management

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Volume 8

  • The demand for construction continues to grow year after year, putting more pressure on the global value chain. Construction labor shortages worldwide, even across OEMs and Integrators that supply construction, makes us question if modular and off-site construction are really solving the manpower issue or just moving it somewhere else. Compounding this situation, and knowingly or unknowingly, the ongoing advocacy of project and construction management practices has pushed project practitioners, as well as many educational institutions, to maintain a strong focus on project administration (e.g., submittals, request for information, progress reporting and forecasting, etc.), creating a significant gap in how even experienced project teams engineer their production processes and operations.

  • The global transition to net-zero emissions demands clean energy technologies that can operate at scale and cost parity with fossil fuels. However, most clean energy projects suffer from commercial unviability, technological inefficiencies, and geopolitical supply chain complexities, resulting in failures at Final Investment Decision (FID) gates. This paper examines how First Principles Thinking (FPT), combined with Project Production Management (PPM) and Operations Science (OS), can address these challenges by reengineering core assumptions and developing cost-effective, scalable solutions combined with a purpose-built delivery system that optimizes cost and schedule and improves delivery predictability.

  • Addressing society’s evolving needs requires tackling interconnected issues – climate change, resource depletion, pollution, and biodiversity loss – simultaneously. The built environment’s longevity and interdependence demand strategic, long-term, and integrated governance. Yet siloed structures in government, regulation, and industry, along with fragmented data, hinder progress and obscure the insights needed to improve outcomes. Without urgent action, we risk cascading system failures, economic harm, and widespread hardship. To create better outcomes where people and nature thrive, planners must understand the system of systems we rely on.

  • A good project plan is not a guarantee for success, but a bad project plan is always a guarantee for failure. Effective project planning relies on a combination of activity-based (work breakdown structures, critical path analyses, etc.) and object-based (flow, critical chain, advanced work packaging, etc.) approaches. However, a critical yet often-overlooked challenge in either approach is the inherent estimation error, which leads to flawed models, unrealistic schedules, and erratic workflows. Systematically, we underestimate both task durations and the variability of those durations, resulting in overly optimistic projections that fail to capture the complexities of the real world.

  • As the construction industry faces compounded challenges—labor shortages, rising material costs, inefficient supply chains, and the climate crisis—mass timber emerges as a compelling solution. Mass timber, as a forestry product, provides a sustainable solution to supply chain challenges and tariff impacts in construction. Produced off-site, it reduces labor, shortens construction time, and decreases transportation costs. Local sourcing strengthens supply chain resilience and reduces emissions. Mass timber offers an alternative to imported materials like steel and concrete, mitigating tariff-induced cost increases. As a renewable resource, mass timber also reduces the carbon footprint of construction, offering a durable, fire-resistant, and environmentally friendly option, fostering building projects’ circularity.

  • Timely and accurate wastewater chemical testing in wastewater treatment plants is essential to confirm compliance with environmental standards and to correct operational problems. In China, trained laboratory analysts manually perform the sampling and testing tasks required by regulations. However, with increasingly stringent environmental regulations and growing complexity in testing protocols, laboratories in these facilities are experiencing capacity constraints. While switching to robotic testing solutions present a promising solution to augment laboratory analysts’ capacity, plant managers face challenges in quantifying its benefits on daily operations to justify the upfront investment.

  • Capital projects consistently underperform despite advancements in planning, digital tools, and enterprise reporting. One key contributor is the continued reliance of conventional metrics, originally designed for administrative oversight, to manage and control production. These metrics fail to reflect the true nature of execution: variability, flow, bottlenecks, and system dynamics. This paper proposes an alternative measurement framework based on Operations Science (OS). Drawing from proven principles in manufacturing and complex project delivery, the framework emphasizes leading, prescriptive, and production-oriented metrics. It presents an approach for metric selection, analysis, and control supported by digital modeling tools that enables teams to predict, visualize, and optimize project production behavior in real time. This framework empowers capital project teams to transition from reactive management to proactive control, improving performance, reducing risk, and enabling better outcomes.

  • This paper investigates how variability in the scope of construction work packages—particularly size-based differences in arrival and service times—affects project performance metrics like completion time, work-in-process (WIP), and cycle time (CT). Using discrete event simulation (DES), the study compares traditional M/M/1 queue behavior with more realistic production systems exhibiting scope-induced correlations with the goal of delivering analytical heuristics for DES results. Due to the transitory nature of construction projects, discrete event simulation is more appropriate than analytical methods. The findings reveal that even with equal average arrival and service rates, variability in scope introduces nonlinear effects on project duration and throughput due to correlations and sequencing. Managerial strategies like scope normalization, sequencing, and buffered releases are recommended to mitigate these impacts and reduce rework risks.

  • Industrialized construction (IC) means many things to many people. It is a concept that has been rediscovered time and again. In recent years, interest in IC has been sparked anew thanks to the promise of increasingly affordable automation, readily available cloud computing, and AI driving innovation in our industry. While jumping on the bandwagon now may be more tempting than ever, individual companies—producers or investors—will want to articulate their rationale for moving towards IC.

  • Capital projects often suffer from significant cost overruns and schedule delays. These issues are frequently caused by poor early alignment, fragmented communication, and a lack of understanding of how production flows impact project performance, leading to high-stress environments and jeopardized profits. Therefore, this study showcases how a Hospital project in California can overcome these industry challenges through a pioneering blend of Operations Science (OS) and the Last Planner System® (LPS). By leveraging proven metrics—Work in Process (WIP), Cycle Time (CT), and Throughput (TH)—the team systematically mapped design, permitting, fabrication, and installation into cohesive production flows. This fusion of OS insights with LPS’s collaborative planning identified a potential five-month reduction in the structural steel phase. The result of this study shows how OS reframes design and construction as integrated production systems, enabling real-time data analysis that goes beyond “complete or incomplete.” The team’s visual dashboards and weekly pull sessions improve alignment, drive early decision-making, and continuously adjust for fluctuations in demand, resulting in more predictable outcomes, less stress, and fewer cost overruns. Expected outcomes include bridging the gap by integrating OS metrics into LPS to drive better decision-making, accelerating schedules by applying OS concepts to structural steel, fostering proactive alignment through early cross-functional collaboration and real-time data insights, and providing scalable practices for future projects. The findings aim to advance the field of Project Production Management (PPM) by providing actionable insights and future academic and industry work.

  • The construction industry faces a growing labor shortage, particularly in skilled trades, leading to increased costs and operational risks. Raise Robotics addresses this challenge with a modular robotic platform designed to automate high-risk, repetitive tasks on construction sites. By initially focusing on building envelope construction, the company demonstrated the value of its system in reducing schedule delays, cost overruns, and safety risks. Real-world deployments have validated its approach, with measurable time and cost savings reported by early partners like JR Butler. Built on a hardware-agnostic, perception-driven architecture, Raise’s platform supports a range of applications including layout, drilling, and fastening, with future expansions planned. This approach enables contractors to adopt automation without disrupting workflows, offering a scalable solution to workforce shortages while enhancing quality and safety across construction environments.

  • Current construction management techniques center around the ‘iron triangle’ of scope/quality, schedule, and resource use, with the common understanding that only two of these three aspects can be optimized in a project. On the other hand, the Project Production Institute (PPI) advocates an Operations Science-based approach to managing projects using five levers invalidating the iron triangle. Those levers are product design, process design, capacity, inventory, and variability. Current methods available for analyzing these levers include Building Information Modeling (BIM) used for product design in the built environment, and operation science concepts and techniques like Little’s Law and Discrete Event Simulation (DES) for the other four levers.

  • Construction teams in fast-cycle cast-in-place concrete work currently lack access to real-time and automated raw production data, including start and end time, the number and location of labor and equipment as resources, limiting their ability to efficiently and effectively model and control production. Without such data, construction teams are unable to make real-time decisions such as identifying delays and bottlenecks, creating and adjusting the best possible composition of the crews to maximize resource utilization and meet the target completion dates for activities, and efficiently reallocating labor and equipment during dynamic site operations. This research proposes a vision-based model that extracts raw production data (start and end time) from video footage to support real-time, data-driven production system modeling and control in cast-in-place concrete work.

Other Perspectives

  • Construction projects frequently begin under conditions of high uncertainty, leading to complex situations in which both the final product and the execution process are not fully defined. Drawing on the Stacey Matrix [1], agile methods such as the Last Planner® System (LPS) [2] or Design Thinking [3] prove effective in initially navigating complexity through the integration of transparency and preventing the slide into chaos.

  • Automation in early-stage infrastructure design remains limited in public sector contexts, where high-end digital tools are often inaccessible. In wastewater management, particularly Interception and Diversion (I&D) works, design workflows are still predominantly manual, leading to inconsistencies, delays, and suboptimal coordination across stakeholders.

  • The engineering and construction industry is undergoing a transformative shift with the adoption of innovative practices aimed at enhancing project performance and competitiveness. Among others, Industrialized Construction has been utilized mainly in Europe and North America for over two decades. Based on a framework developed for IC housing projects, IC encompasses a broader approach that integrates nine components: planning and control of processes, developed technical systems, prefabrication, long-term relations, logistics, use of ICT, re-use of experience and measurements, customer and market focus, and continuous improvement.

Volume 7

  • While many obvious warning signs exist on projects that point to an unhealthy state of being – in jeopardy of not meeting business, cost, schedule, quality and safety objectives, there exist other red flags that are not as obvious and often overlooked by project teams. Among these, five standout: 1) Re-baselining, 2) Asking Superficial Questions to Determine Project Health, 3) More Will Fix It Approach, 4) We Have Plenty of Time, and 5) We Keep Doing the Same Thing (And Expecting Different Results).

  • Good hand-offs from one performer to the next have always been an important part of the Last Planner System® (LPS). LPS features a rigorous process for making reliable commitments and the Percent Plan Complete (PPC) metric to measure how many were done as promised. LPS and PPC have helped reduce waste and frustration in countless weekly planning meetings and represent a major step forward in how we think about work on projects. Reliable commitments and PPC, however, focus primarily on the upstream side of the hand-off: What are we committing to do? What about commitments on the other side of the handoff: Who is committing use what was produced and how quickly will they do so?

  • Effective communication and coordination during daily planning meetings are crucial for successful project execution and fostering a robust safety culture in the construction industry. However, conventional project management approaches, rooted in what the Project Production Institute (PPI) identifies as Era 1 and Era 2 thinking, have significant gaps that prevent the satisfactory management and execution of today’s complex and dynamic capital projects. This paper presents a novel approach that aligns with PPI’s Era 3 thinking, viewing projects as production systems and applying operations science to optimize delivery.

  • As a project progresses throughout its lifecycle, it is important for the project team to learn from prior completed activities in the system. This can be used to adjust the remaining contingency for the project. In this paper, this situation is modelled using Erlang Distribution. Using Bayes’ Law, the associated cost for the remaining work packages is adjusted and fit to the required confidence based on the updated arrival rates of the bottleneck resource.

  • To meet the demand for infrastructure created by digital transformation, energy transition, and the need for commercial and residential space, owners and their contractors continue to move work offsite in an attempt to reduce the duration of site construction by increasing the amount of parallel offsite work. At the same time, from hospital modules to small modular reactors (SMR’s), the thinking is that construction can be made like manufacturing where safer, more productive work environments reduce the cost and time of project delivery. However, for many, the benefit of an offsite strategy remains elusive.

  • To deliver projects predictably, organizations rely on the use of schedules and various techniques to create and visualize them, including Critical Path Method (CPM), Gantt charts, and physical/virtual “stickie note” plans to name a few. Schedules may be created either by highly skilled schedulers or through collaboration with input from various project participants. To make schedules more robust including better predicting the implications of variability and determining how much contingency to carry, many organizations have been utilizing Monte-Carlo schedule simulations. Under this perspective, and regardless of whether schedules are deterministic or stochastics, they all utilize activity durations (including leads and lags) as the means to absorb variability.

  • The adoption of offsite construction methods presents a forward-thinking solution to critical challenges such as stagnant productivity rates, widespread housing shortages, skilled labor shortages, and increasing carbon emissions. However, moving the production location from onsite to offsite makes management a more complex task, resulting in offsite construction projects not achieving the time and cost targets. For instance, we observed that an offsite production factory incurred unnecessary high inventory costs due to holding too many products in stock before the onsite installation started. This research paper delves into the implementation of the Production System Optimization (PSO) framework to manage capacity, inventory and variability of offsite construction projects.

  • Capital project owners and service providers may be blind to the fact that working with excessive amounts of inventory contributes to longer schedules, cost overruns and impact to cash flow, which negatively affects return on investment. On the other hand, not enough inventory and the project will not achieve the required throughput while also compromising cost and schedule targets. So, in the spectrum of too much and too little, is there an optimal point? What are the drivers of this optimal point? Can we determine it, and if so, how?

Volume 6

  • Schedules vs. Project Production Systems

    Current project management practice focuses primarily on what to build (scope), when to build (dates) and who will do the work. Schedules depicting what work needs to be done by whom, and when it needs to be done, establish overall expectations (what should / want to happen) and are used as the basis for reporting and forecasting of project progress using baselines. Ignoring the other elements of the equation, the processes and the capacity of the labor, equipment and space that will do the work, i.e., the project production system, results in the inability to effectively predict and control project outcomes as this defines how the work will be done.

  • RPA for Estimating ER Releases

    Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a rapidly evolving technology that has been widely adopted in various industries for its ability to automate repetitive and rule-based tasks. In this paper, we present a case study of RPA implementation for Estimating Services within Saudi Aramco. The implementation of RPA has led to increased productivity, reduced processing time, and consistent and accurate estimate production. The paper provides an overview of the RPA implementation process, the benefits realized, and the challenges faced during the implementation process.

  • Lean Methods in Nuclear Power

    Nuclear power is returning to the energy agenda in Europe and elsewhere across the globe because of the challenges of Climate Change and a refreshed understanding of the need for energy security. Nuclear power has a cost problem which is largely driven by the high cost of construction and long build schedules.

  • The concurrent development of product designs and process designs, typically to achieve a balance of customer requirements, product functionality, and predictable buildability, is one effective technique in the pursuit of industrialized construction. Too many customer requirements and functions, and the product becomes difficult and unpredictable to deliver. Too much focus on cost & manufacturability and the product falls short of customer expectations.

  • Simulation Preemption of Construction Operations

    Construction simulation models often need to interrupt activities in progress when events such as equipment breakdowns or differing soil conditions are encountered. The new functions and statements to support activity preemption directly in the STROBOSCOPE simulation system are described and illustrated by two examples. The first example involves moving soil using two wheelbarrows and two laborers and investigates whether interrupting the loading of a wheelbarrow by the return of an empty wheelbarrow that starts loading immediately can improve long-term production. Variability in the loading and hauling times makes it difficult to predict when the preemption of loading would be beneficial, even when the operations are balanced.

  • The future of capital project execution for the heavy industrial sector needs to look at innovative ways to improve productivity and project success, including focusing on the product design lever through implementation of productization methods. The benefits of a productization strategy are not well known, however industrial productization is becoming more communicated within the industry as the future implementation model. Industrial productization utilizes more of a manufacturing style approach to not only improve productivity but to reduce overall lifecycle costs and schedules and improve overall quality and safety.

  • Target Value Delivery (TVD) is a process for setting project value targets and the corresponding cost targets prior to design, then steering design and construction to those targets. Doing so has proven to consistently deliver value for money. This paper describes how TVD differs from other project delivery processes and how to do TVD successfully.

  • Getting projects off to a good start is the aspiration of every project manager and a critical first step towards smooth flowing work later. Unfortunately, many of our large projects are stymied before the construction team gets a chance to mobilize. Few aspects of project delivery are more disruptive or wasteful than discovering the desired scope cannot be completed at an acceptable cost after most of the design budget has been spent and bidders have been thoroughly exercised. Project after project suffers through this frustration yet the industry continues to utilize the same basic process, analogous to holding a position on the beach while being soaked by wave after wave.

  • Managers of construction projects have been focusing on cost, schedule, quality and safety to measure project performance using conventional metrics from administration management. These conventional metrics have led them to underestimate or overlook how variability, prerequisites for starting work, and work-in-process (WIP) affect project performance, which is a problem. To tackle this problem, concepts from Operations Science (OS) can be applied to construction production system design (PSD), focusing on metrics pertaining to throughput, work-in-process, cycle time, and capacity utilization. While the application of these concepts in building construction is still uncommon, this paper demonstrates by means of an example case study (a healthcare building in Northern California) how this may be done.

Volume 5

  • Productivity trend graphs are often used to track progress (or lack thereof) for labor productivity improvement in the various industries over a span of several decades. Numerous sources representing Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. have compiled data to create such graphs. The most widely used graph to date was prepared by Professor Paul Teicholz of Stanford University in 2013. However, most of these graphs (including Teicholz’s) only focus on a timeframe of about fifty years, from the 1960’s through 2010’s.

  • Does Contracting Strategy Matter?

    For over a century, contract types have barely evolved to keep up with the complexity of today’s projects. Regardless of contract type, today’s contracts continue to assign risk to the owner or contractor, or both. This itself is a myth – owners have and will always carry the risk. This fact has not changed the financial burdens that contractors carry to their own detriment.

  • Stage Gate – What Are the Implications?

    The stage gate project development approach, as adopted by the engineering and construction industry, was designed as a business process both to meter spending prior to the investment decision and yield predictable outcomes. It has been widely implemented across industrial capital project sectors such as energy, mining, infrastructure, chemicals and pharma.

  • Does Agile Apply to Capital Projects?

    In recent years, the implementation of Agile mindsets or methodologies has become an increasingly common trend within organizational management. In a 2017 McKinsey Quarterly survey of 2,500 business leaders, 75% of respondents said organizational agility was a top or top-three priority, and nearly 40% were in the process of conducting an organizational-agility transformation.

  • Are Your Supply Chains Resilient?

    Everything from toilet paper to medical equipment has been in short supply for a myriad of reasons including manufacturing capacities, lead times to manufacture, source country priority and unpredictable demand, or in many cases lack of accurate demand forecasts.

Volume 4

  • Editor’s Letter

    As this Edition of the Journal goes to press, several events since the last Journal signal the increasing growth of the Project Production Institute. Our December 2018 Annual Symposium was the most successful yet, with a full capacity audience attending sessions ranging from an Introduction to PPM, accompanied by case examples presented by industry practitioners, to Production Systems Optimization.

  • This white paper advocates cycle time analysis for assessing the efficiency of unconventional field development program by operators. Higher returns and increased cash flow can be achieved by decreasing the cycle time and optimizing the amount of work-in-process (WIP)in onshore field development programs.

  • One of the primary underlying tenets of Project Production Management (PPM) is that operators can and should be calculating the appropriate level of inventory required within and between each task in their project. While almost all operators track inventory, or WIP, few to none know what that inventory should be. In addition, there is a lack of clarity around the financial impacts of controlling inventory and how this relates to equity performance.

  • “Factory” Models in Oil and Gas Field Development

    During the past few years, oil and gas executives have begun to profess they use a “factory” or “manufacturing” approach to field development. Terminology such as “factory” or “manufacturing” is intended to connote a sense of improved operational efficiency, compared with what was achieved with previous approaches to field development.

  • US Unconventional Operators are Leaving Billions of Dollars of Value on the “Factory” Floor

    Over the period 2014 to 2018, US unconventional operators reduced well breakeven costs in response to oil prices falling from a median price of $76/barrel in 2014 to just under $50/barrel in 2018. As oil prices begin increasing again, investors question whether these cost reductions are genuinely sustainable, achieved by long term structural changes or whether they are cyclical in nature, and therefore temporary.

  • Understanding Supplier Production Systems

    Supplier production and on-time delivery of material is a vital element of any major capital project’s success. Project management teams are often ignorant of supplier operations management practices and thereby suffer loss of major opportunities to improve project performance.

  • How Autonomous Vehicles Will Disrupt Logistics and Create New Business Opportunities

    Autonomous vehicles—on the road, in the air, or over the water—are expected to disrupt business processes, operating costs, and economic models. Logistics and supply chain operations will be deeply affected, as will the relationship between service providers and customers.

  • Concurrent Digital Engineering for Capital Projects

    Ongoing analysis of efficiency in construction compared to other industries indicates construction continues to fall further behind. There are several reasons for this, but one that is most prevalent is the difference in approach to design and engineering between advanced industries such as aerospace, automotive, etc. and the construction industry.

  • Digital Technology and Project Production Management – What is the Relationship?

    The 2018 PPI Symposium incorporated significant discussion about the role of digital technology including artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT sensor and autonomous in support of Project Production Management (PPM) as the means to achieve better project outcomes. Though the relationship is obvious for many, the connection is not apparent to others.

  • Differentiating Production Processes from Functional and Administration Processes

    The effective implementation of Project Production Management (PPM) requires a clear understanding of production processes within a given project production system – how they transform information and materials into outputs using capacity contributors (labor, equipment, space) and based on specific objectives, policies and requirements.

  • PPI Process Mapper

    The delivery of a project is most often planned and controlled using a schedule. Though common, this approach focuses on the demand side only. By this, we mean that the customer (owner, program manager, construction manager, etc.) sets forth what is needed from the network of service providers (designers, engineers, fabricators, contractors, etc.) to execute the scope of the project.

  • Cycle Time Formula Revisited

    Herein we describe a refinement of the well-known Cycle Time Formula, introducing two new components into the formula. One component describes the “wait-to-match” time of different routings in a production system converging at a single point, such as in an assembly operation. The second component accounts for “planned time buffers” – the time that parts or tasks are waiting, whether or not they can be worked on because of policies governing whether work can be done or not.

  • Little’s Law in Production Systems with Yield Loss

    The basic relationship, WIP = CT x TH known as Little’s Law has wide application in both production systems as well as projects. However, when some parts/tasks are never completed because they are either scrapped (yield loss) or have become obsolete (as in a project), the application becomes a bit more complex. This study presents an analysis of these situations and concludes with a more general set of Little’s Law equations, as referenced in Factory Physics.

Volume 3

  • PPI Position Paper: Understanding the True Cost and Impact of Inventory

    One of the most significant differences between conventional project management and Project Production Management is the view of inventory. In large capital projects, a usual practice is to amass as much inventory as possible, because “schedule will be met if everything needed is already onsite”. Almost no consideration is given to the potential implications of such a decision, with respect to execution or financial risk.

  • Reprint: CONWIP: a Pull Alternative to Kanban

    This paper describes a new pull-based production system called CONWIP. Practical advantages of CONWIP over push and other pull systems are given. Theoretical arguments in favour of the system are outlined and simulation studies are included to give insight into the system’s performance.

  • Systems Engineering and the Project Delivery Process in the Design and Construction of Built Infrastructure

    How can a systems engineering approach be applied to the project delivery process in the design and construction of built infrastructure? First, this paper articulates how infrastructure can be seen as a system of interest, a complex production system that is operated and delivered through enabling production and work systems. Second, it considers systems operation, where research in the systems engineering discipline shifts attention from ‘operator error’ (and root causes) to the systemic accident factors.

  • A “Gap” in Current Project Management and The Impact on Project Outcomes

    An article in a previous edition of this Journal outlined the evolution of project management over three distinct Eras. Eras 1 & 2 encapsulate conventional project management thinking, while Era 3 describes a Project Production Management framework that views projects as temporary production systems and applies Operations Science to optimize project delivery.

  • PPI Position: The Limitations of Capital Project Benchmarking

    Over the last thirty years, the practice of benchmarking capital projects and performing statistical analyses to infer trends and best practices, has become a standard for the evaluation of capital project performance. Over that period, despite the emergence of many recommended best practices to improve project performance derived from benchmarking, major capital project outcomes remain stubbornly poor.

  • Rethinking the Product-Process Matrix for Projects

    The Product-Process Matrix, first proposed by Hayes and Wheelwright, is a fundamental concept in Operations Science. Products made in production systems vary in complexity, ranging from highly customized low volume products to commodity, standard high-volume products. The Product-Process Matrix describes how certain types of production processes are more naturally matched for some product-volume mixes compared with other types of processes.

  • Unintended Consequences of Using Work-In-Process to Increase Throughput

    The first volume of the PPI Journal included a tutorial article on Little’s Law, explaining the fundamental relationship between throughput, cycle time and work-in-process (WIP) for all production systems, including those that are contained within capital projects. For those new to Operations Sciences, a more naïve interpretation of Little’s Law leads novices to infer that one need only increase WIP arbitrarily high to increase throughput to whatever target level is desired.

  • The Efficacy of Project Production Control

    For years now, project managers have been applying a methodology called Project Production Control (PPC) to assist them in delivering projects on time and under budget. While there have been several papers on how PPC is different from traditional project management methods, none have described these from a probabilistic/statistical viewpoint. This paper seeks to fill that gap.

  • Operations Science View of Value Stream Mapping

    Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a term that describes a family of popular techniques used to analyze production systems. Popularized in the 1980s by Womack and Jones and the Lean movement, VSM is a staple tool associated with lean practitioners. Modern day practice of VSM, heavily influenced by the book by Rother and Shook, is to map a current and future state of the flow of production, and to identify ways to eliminate waste or non-value adding activities, leaving only value-adding activities.

  • Managing Work at the Point of Installation

    A significant gap exists around how to manage work at the frontline, or the point of installation. The inability to effectively manage execution of work is a key reason projects continue to suffer from cost and schedule overruns along with the associated claims. The Institute’s principals have come to this conclusion through conversations with numerous experts over three decades about improving the outcomes of capital projects.

Volume 2

  • Project Production Management (PPM) is sometimes described as “applying manufacturing techniques to projects,” implying that PPM only applies to scenarios with highly repeatable and predictable conditions.  Consequently, many experienced project professionals mistakenly believe that PPM denotes a “manufacturing approach” to capital projects. To the contrary, evidence shows that PPM applies to the execution and delivery of all projects, large or small, customized or standardized, and improves upon prior conventional project management practices.

  • Consequence of Lead Time on Capital Project Outcomes

    The ever-increasing lead time for products (including materials and permanent equipment) required to deliver a capital project results in increased project delivery costs and operating costs for owners, not to mention the associated loss of revenue and related lost opportunity cost.

  • PPI Position Paper: A Comparison of Lean Construction with Project Production Management

    Project Management aims to address the myriad technical, human, organizational and managerial issues encountered during project execution. Over the past two decades, different variants have emerged, including Lean Project Management, Agile Project Management, Scrum, Theory of Constraints and Extreme Project Management, to name a few. Lean Construction [2,36,54] utilizes concepts originally from Lean manufacturing and applies them specifically to the delivery of projects in the construction sector.

  • Reprint – To Pull or Not to Pull: What Is the Question?

    The terms pull and lean production have become cornerstones of modern manufacturing practice. However, although they are widely used, they are less widely understood. In this paper, we argue that while the academic literature has steadily revealed the richness of the pull/lean concepts, the practitioner literature has progressively simplified these terms to the point that serious misunderstandings now exist.

  • Technical Tutorial: Optimal Level of WIP in a Production System

    In the previous edition of the Journal, we featured a tutorial article on Little’s Law, which is a fundamental relationship between Throughput (TH), Cycle Time (CT) and Work-In-Process (WIP). These core variables are found in all production systems, including those that are contained within capital projects. A naïve interpretation of Little’s Law frequently leads those new to operations science to infer that one need only increase WIP to arbitrarily high levels in order to increase throughput to whatever target level is desired.

  • What is a Production System? Different disciplines, ranging from manufacturing to civil engineering and construction to project management and Lean, refer to the term, but few define it. One can only assume its meaning is generally taken to be self-evident from the constituent words. However, for purposes of Project Production Management, as with other scientific fields, a more precise definition, distinct from colloquial usage or usage in other subjects, is an essential part of a theoretical framework for making predictions about project execution performance and to identify how to control project execution.

  • Research Digest: Preliminary Investigations into Capital Projects Supply Chain Management

    In the previous edition of this Journal, we outlined a three-phase research program to explore ordering and scheduling practices that lead to earliness and delays in materials and equipment delivery in capital projects. Usually, owner-operators and their EPC’s look to minimize the risk of schedule delays due to late materials and parts delivery by mandating that parts and materials be delivered far in advance of when they are needed.

  • Infrastructure Project Performance: There Must Be a Different Way

    In the United States, one of the few areas of political confluence appears to be around the need to address the country’s crumbling infrastructure. As priorities in governmental spending have shifted toward social objectives, investment in infrastructure over the past several decades has been woefully inadequate, not only in terms of expansion to keep pace with the needs of society, but also in terms of basic asset maintenance.

  • The Shape of Things to Come: Transforming the Delivery of Infrastructure

    In the first three months of 2017, three important reports were published on the future of the construction industry and the delivery of new infrastructure [1 – 3]. These reports highlight the distinct challenges we face in developing our economic and social infrastructure, and the woeful performance of the global construction industry over the past twenty years. They go on to make similar recommendations for reform.

  • How to Unlock & Capture Value in Project Supply Chains

    Supply process flows are critical to the successful delivery of infrastructure projects and associated key business drivers (growth, reduced costs or lead times, reliability, etc.). Implementing a Project Production Management (PPM) structured approach with suppliers is essential to capture value within the supply network, extending beyond conventional procurement practices. We illustrate this by examining three examples of infrastructure projects.

  • Adopting Production Control: The Example of Onshore Field Development

    Since 2010, Hess has led the oil & gas industry in the application of Project Production Control to the execution of oil & gas operations. Using methods and techniques originally developed for optimizing manufacturing and production processes to work execution in oil & gas operations, the company has achieved both significant cost reductions and increased reliability for the completion of work.

Volume 1

  • The Project Production Institute increases industry awareness and facilitates a shift in thinking to support the application of Project Production Management theory and methodologies to major capital projects. PPI funds research and disseminates knowledge about the application of operations management and systems theory for the delivery of complex and critical projects.

  • The Institute has established a number of steering committees to guide its agenda.

    The Technical Committee consists of academics and industry experts respected in the technical disciplines that comprise the Project Production Management body of knowledge. It provides input into the research agenda, guidance on technical issues and domain expertise related to Project Production Management. As research expands the Project Production Management body of knowledge, the Institute looks to the Technical Committee as the authority to validate the content.

  • New Era of Project Delivery – Project as Production System

    Project management can be viewed as having developed over 3 distinct time frames, or Eras, in response to the evolving nature and needs of projects over time. Viewing project management through the framework of the 3 Eras provides a number of useful insights described in this article. Conventional project management, as codified by the Project Management Institute, spans the first two Eras.

  • From Factory Physics® to Project Physics

    Project managers want projects delivered on time and under budget. Unfortunately, most project managers are handicapped by flawed, or plain wrong, decision-making models for controlling the complexity and variability inherent in project management. The history of project management has been a progression of focus on cost and schedule using ever-newer concepts and computer software.

  • Reprint: Little’s Law as Viewed on Its 50th Anniversary

    Compared to other fields, most papers in mathematics are rarely cited. The average number of citations for an article in a mathematics/computer journal in the two years following publication is less than one (Amin and Mabe 2000). Little (1961) is a mathematical paper. Its 50th anniversary provides a good occasion to look back at its history and ask why “Little’s Law” has become well known and, more importantly, ask what has been its role in the development of theory and practice in queuing.

  • Little’s Law – A Practical Approach to Understanding Production System Performance

    Since it was first published over 50 years ago, Little’s Law has been applied, with great success, to numerous fields such as telecommunications networks, retail supply chain management, logistics and manufacturing. But is it applicable to project delivery? If so, how can we benefit from its use? In the first of what is intended to be a series of short tutorials in the Journal, we explain the application of Little’s Law to the delivery of capital projects.

  • Contrasting Project Production Control With Project Controls

    The primary purpose of this paper is to first define and then differentiate Project Controls and Project Production Control. The paper also provides a brief historical perspective and examples of the application of each discipline. The paper concludes that although the two disciplines are distinct, each plays a different and important role in Project Delivery.

  • From Construction to Production: New Delivery Models for Infrastructure

    The United Kingdom is in a new era of infrastructure development. Our infrastructure is mature and in need of renewal. Most investment is in existing networks and facilities, where it competes for space with the delivery of services to customers. And infrastructure is becoming more integrated and more reliant on digital technologies to provide new capacity and ensure its smooth operation.

  • “Advancing” Advanced Work Packaging (AWP)

    Advanced Work Packaging (AWP) refers to an approach for planning the delivery of capital projects that aims to maximize productivity at the work face by aligning the deliverables of engineering design with what is needed in construction. The term Advanced Work Packaging was coined only a few years ago, and industry implementation to date appears to vary significantly. This article explores questions such as: What does the AWP approach entail? What success may be expected? Is there room for improvement?

  • A Method to Optimize Onshore Drilling Rig Fleet Size and Schedule Considering Both Reservoir Management and Operational Objectives

    Some of the most important and expensive activities in onshore oil and gas field development involve the use of drilling rigs. Using a production systems perspective, this paper presents a method to optimize onshore drilling rig fleet size and schedule considering reservoir management and operational objectives, namely maximizing production volume, meeting production targets and/or minimizing rig costs.

  • Optimizing project outcomes requires that current conceptual thinking and frameworks associated with project delivery are understood. This research proposes that delivery of projects can be best understood through three primary historic eras: Era 1 – Productivity, Era 2 – Predictability and Era 3 – Profitability. These eras, which directly correlate to the development of modern operations management thinking, have had significant influence on how projects are delivered today, and form the basis of current trends in thinking about how to improve performance.

  • The Cost and Impact of Earliness and Delays in Materials and Parts Delivery

    The aim of this project is to explore, in a qualitative sense, the practice of earliness and delays in materials and parts delivery during the delivery of a capital project.

    We hypothesize that this current practice exists because available tools are limited: project managers have limited knowledge of trade-offs and limited incentives to effectively trade-off cost and project performance, despite the fact that even project managers believe current practices are likely to negatively impact project performance.

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