Eduardo L. Isatto

The Role of Commitments in the Management of Construction Make-to-Order Supply Chains

AbstractThe integration and coordination of make-to-order (MTO) supply chains is critical for successful execution of construction projects. This study aims to investigate the potential of the language-action perspective (LAP) to analyze the way commitments are demanded, bound, and fulfilled by supply chain members, and how these affect the integration and coordination of construction MTO supply chains. Two case studies were carried out, including agents in the building elevator and cut-and-bent rebar supply chains. Multiple sources of evidence, such as exploratory and structured interviews, site visits, and document analysis, provided invaluable data to support the analysis. This evidence reveals that most of the information flow problems of MTO chains can be traced to the way that commitments among people and firms are managed along such chains. It also shows that the kinds of failure in managing those commitments can be associated with their incompleteness or the poor connectivity among them. The study...

Understanding the theory behind the Last Planner System using the Language-Action Perspective: two case studies

Abstract Since the Last Planner System® (LPS) was devised in the early 90s, a number of studies have pointed out the need to understand the underlying theory in which it is based on. The Language-Action Perspective (LAP) has been suggested as a suitable approach to understand the management of commitments in the LPS. This paper aims to assess the contribution of LAP to understand construction planning and control systems based on LPS. Two case studies were carried out in different construction companies, both highly experienced on the use of LPS. The results reveal the role of LAP for creating explicit representations of commitment flows that can be used to explain the sources of complexity and failures in planning systems, as well as for describing the profile of planning and control meetings.