Synchronization of Engineering, Manufacturing and on-site Installation in Lean ETO-Enterprises

In the past few years and decades there have been major efforts to optimize production by methods such as Lean Manufacturing. After introducing these methods with success in the production area, the Lean philosophy spilled over to other areas such as administration, healthcare or even the construction industry. Especially with Lean Construction helpful methods were developed to reduce waste in the organization of the installation work on-site. Many industrial companies, particularly from the Engineer-to-order (ETO) sector, have great difficulties to interlock with each other the areas of engineering, manufacturing and installation on-site. Thus, this paper describes a holistic Lean Enterprise approach to avoid waste in the whole process by synchronizing all activities throughout engineering, production and the execution phase on-site.