Exploring Lean Practices’ Importance in Sustainable Supply Chain Management Trends: An Empirical Study in Canadian Construction Industry

Abstract

To contend with the current economic conditions, construction managers are recommended to identify sustainable construction supply chain management (CSCM) trends over the forthcoming years and adopt suitable techniques to manage construction projects strategically, tactically, and operationally. However, there is a shortage of studies exploring Lean Construction (LC) practices’ contributions to sustainable CSCM trends in the forthcoming years. Thus, this paper applies the integrated fuzzy AHP–Delphi approach to identify key sustainable CSCM trends and uses them as strategic evaluation criteria to assess and rank LC techniques. The evaluation was done by 28 experts having more than four years’ experience and expertise in lean construction and sustainable CSCM. This work also provides managerial implications by proposing a framework for LC techniques to advance sustainability throughout construction project phases.

Keywords:

• Supply Chain Management
• Construction Industry
• Lean Construction
• Sustainable Construction
• Sustainability Trends

EMJ Focus Areas:

• Operations Management; Supply Chain Management

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT), VNU-HCM for their support of time and facilities for this study.

We also express our sincere gratitude to the editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which significantly enhance the paper’s quality.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Phuoc-Luong Le

Phuoc-Luong Le, PhD, is a Lecturer at Department of Production and Operations Management, School of Industrial Management, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT), Vietnam National University (VNU-HCM). He holds a PhD degree in Supply Chain Engineering and Management at ÉTS, University of Quebec, Montreal, Canada. His research interest focuses on supply chain management, lean manufacturing, operations, and production management.

Duy-Tan Nguyen

Duy-Tan Nguyen is a PhD candidate in Logistics and Operations Management at HEC Montreal and a student member of the Group for Research in Decision Analysis (GERAD), Montreal, Canada. His research focus is on inventory control, distribution planning, and supply chain management.