Delivering sustainability: Lean principles for green projects

Corporate facility owners have developed an increased interest in high performance "sustainable" or "green" facilities. The superior long term performance of these facilities in energy efficiency and indoor environment quality makes them excellent investments for both public and private facility owners. However, project budget increases often result due to complex design processes requiring elevated levels of interaction between design and construction disciplines. Lean production principles are able to reduce waste and streamline processes in highly complex development and production environments. When utilized they can greatly shorten lead times, reduce costs, and show considerable promise for improving the delivery of high performance green facilities. This paper reports a research project between Penn State University and the Toyota Motor Corporation into the successful delivery processes for high performance green facilities. Guided by the principles of the Toyota Production System, the objective of this research is to map in detail the delivery processes for high performance green facilities at Toyota. The outcome of this research has revealed the critical factors that contribute to Toyota's success at high performance green facility delivery, thereby providing corporate facility owners with much needed insight to achieve better delivered high performance green facilities.