The House of Toyota – An Inspiration for Lean Design and Construction
Iris D. Tommelein
President’s seminar series – “Distinguished Women Researchers in the Built Environment”
April 12th at 11:30am Eastern time
Designers and builders apply building science to engineer and physically build a foundation-, structural-, HVAC-, and other systems required to make up a house, a facility, or civil infrastructure. These systems must be attuned to each other and harmoniously work together so that they can deliver the desired fit-for-purpose project and resulting product.
In addition, their ways of working to develop and build new products must also be attuned to each other so that everyone can work together harmoniously. The principles and methods that support effective and efficient collaboration fall in the realm of management science. Here we focus on principles and methods pertaining to lean construction or what sometimes is called operations science.
Lean is a term that refers to the way Toyota designs and makes cars. Toyota has been using a house as a metaphor to describe its systems comprising principles and methods. In the seminar ‘The House of Toyota – An Inspiration for Lean Design and Construction’ we will look at the systems that make up the House of Toyota and then relate them to principles and methods that serve the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. The House of Toyota should be an inspiration for designers and builders who aspire to deliver fit-for-purpose systems.
Biography
Dr. Iris D. Tommelein has a 5-year degree in Civil Engineering/Architecture from the Free University of Brussels (VUB) in Belgium. Then as graduate student at Stanford University she earned an MS in Civil Engineering (Construction Engineering and Management) in 1985, an MS Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) in 1989, and a PhD Civil Engineering Civil Engineering (Construction Engineering and Management) in 1989. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Iris and colleagues founded the Lean Construction Institute (LCI) in 1997 and UC Berkeley’s Project Production Systems Laboratory (P2SL) in 2005. Iris is a leading member of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) and a member of the National Academy of Construction (NAC). She received LCI’s Lean Pioneer Award in 2015, the Project Production Institute’s Technical Achievement Award in 2022, and this year became the first woman to receive the American Society of Civil Engineer’s Construction Management Award.
The seminar is part of the CIB President’s seminar series – “Distinguished Women Researchers in the Built Environment”
