<p>The internal and external
challenges construction companies face such as variability, low productivity,
inefficient processes, waste, uncertainties, risks, fragmentation, adversarial
contractual relationships, competition, and those resulting from internal and
external challenges such as cost overruns and delays negatively affect company performance and
profitability. Though research publications abound, these challenges persist,
which indicates that the following gaps exist. Lean construction, process
improvement, and performance improvement research have been conducted wherein
improvement principles, and best practices are used to ameliorate performance
issues, but several knowledge gaps exist. Few companies use these improvement
principles and best practices. For those
companies applying improvements, there is no established link between these
improvements and performance/profitability to guide companies. Further, even
when companies use improvement principles and best practices, they apply only
one or two, whereas an integrated application of these improvement principles
and best practices would be more effective. The other gap the author identified
is the lack of strategic tools that construction companies can use to improve
and manage their profitability. This thesis tried to fill the knowledge gap, at
least partially, by developing a two-part excellence model for profitability
improvement of construction companies. The excellence model lays out strategies
that would enable companies to overcome the challenges and improve their
profitability. The excellence model also gives an iterative and recursive
continuous improvement model and flowchart to improve the profitability of
construction companies. The researcher used high impact principles, guidelines,
and concepts from the literature on organizational effectiveness, critical
success factors, strategic company profitability growth enablers, process improvement,
and process maturity models, performance improvement, and organizational
excellence guidelines to develop the two-part excellence model.</p>
<p>The author also translated the
two-part excellence model into the diagnostic tool and Decision Support System
(DSS) by use of process diagrams, fishbone diagrams, root cause analysis, and
use of improvement principles, countermeasures and best practices at the most
granular (lowest intervention) levels to do away with root causes of poor
performance. The author developed the diagnostic tool and Decision Support
System (DSS) in Access 2016 to serve as a strategic tool to improve and manage
the profitability of construction companies.
The researcher used improvement principles, and best practices from scientific and
practitioner literature to develop company and project process flow diagrams,
and fishbone (cause and effect) diagrams for company, department, employee,
interactions and project performance for the profitability improvement, which
are the engines of the diagnostic tool and DSS. The diagnostic tool and DSS use
continuous improvement cycles iteratively and recursively to improve the
profitability of construction companies from the current net profit of 2-3
percent to a higher value.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/12703076 |
| Date | 29 July 2020 |
| Creators | Fekadu Debella (9155963) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/PROFITABILITY_IMPROVEMENT_OF_CONSTRUCTION_FIRMS_THROUGH_CONTINUOUS_IMPROVEMENT_USING_RAPID_IMPROVEMENT_PRINCIPLES_AND_BEST_PRACTICES/12703076 |
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