ZEMCH 2015 - International Conference Proceedings | Page 533

participants. Moreover they are not focused on process management or the continuous improvement processes.

Barriers in the implementation of MC as a competitive strategy
After literature review is deduced that to take full advantage of MC as a competitive strategy offering customers added value without increasing costs and deadlines, it is necessary to deal with
some implementing barriers such as the increase in uncertainty, complexity, cost and time. Likewise, the implementation of MC in residential house building magnify even more the frequently
existing problems in the site management. Usually these problems are caused by low levels of
efficiency and productivity of works, due mainly to some causes that have their origin in the business organization such us obsolete management models, lack of business integration, improvisation in decisions or search for short-term benefit. (ISEA, 2007: 1-2). Other existing common problem is the professional fragmentation on site, i.e., the large number of different organisations with
different conflicting objectives, skills and interests, creating fragmentation and adversarial relationship between project participants (Othman & Ahmed, 2011: 333-347). Also the frequent lack of
formation together with the lack of a systematic procedure leads to a tendency to improvisation
(Arcudia Abad, Solís Carcaño, & Baeza Pereyra, 2004: 145-154). Finally, another important aspect
which affects the efficiency and productivity is the heavy dependence of the building sector on
human resources rather than adopting advanced or automated technology (Chiang & Tang, 2003:
1-17). It is well known in the sector the low usage of technologies in construction companies (Choo
& Tommelein, 2001; Hosseini, Chileshe, Zou, & Baroudi, 2013: 1-12.; Segerstedt, Olofsson, Hadaya,
& Pellerin, 2010: 371-384), characterized by the lack of integration of software diversity used in
isolation (Forcada Matheu, 2005) and low implantation of Enterprise Resource Planning systems
(hereinafter ERP)(ONTSI, 2013), and those that have done often express a technological wastage
due to their manufacturing origin that does not meet the needs of the construction industry (Shi
& Halpin, 2003: 214-221; Yang, Wu, & Tsai, 2007: 787-796). This fact promotes the tightness of information, impeding information being transferred from one stage to another (Alshawi & Faraj, 2002:
33-51), and fosters the existence of errors due to the inadequate, incomplete and outdated information that usually lead to delays and extra costs during the execution of a construction project
(Hong-Minh, Barker, & Naim, 2001: 49-59).
Therefore, to reach the paradigm of MC in residential house building it is necessary to achieve
a comprehensive model which allow eliminate or decrease the current productivity problems
on site, facilitating an efficient construction management of the variability derived from each
customer options. Then, competitive essential actions such as a change of mind, a shift toward
process orientation and improved communications (Hong-Minh et al., 2001: 49-59) are necessary
to eliminate the adversity and competition atmosphere (Martín, Frías, & Romero, 2008) becoming
the adversity tendency between parties into adaptations and collaborations for mutual success.
Also to implement security and training oriented programs for all the workers, or systematized
procedures (Arcudia Abad et al., 2004: 145-154).

Model proposal
Currently within the construction field there are some new emerging trends to manage barriers
previously specified against the efficiency in construction, like lean construction, six sigma and
ICT´s solutions among others. Despite the constantly demonstrated benefits of these emerging
approaches and tools (Koskela, 1992, 1997) (Abdelhamid, 2003; Desale, 2013:1-8; Howell, 1999; Shan
& Li, 2013: 245-252), all of them offer independent and partial solutions, thus not an integral solution (Table 1). For that reason, in this work is proposed a general and integral model to achieve

BPM and LSS as enablers of mass customization in construction

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