Identification of Critical Barriers in Implementing Lean Construction Practices in Indian Construction Industry

The purpose of this paper is to identify the critical barriers in implementing Lean construction practices in the Indian construction industry. This study incorporates ISM (Interpretive structural modeling) and MICMAC (Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification) for data collection and analysis, respectively. The method comprised conducting interviews in person with experts from four construction companies who have implemented Lean practices in their projects in India. The experts with an experience between 5 and 15 years were selected for the interview to examine the contextual relationship among the 12 barriers which were identified through various literature reviews and via a survey of 20 construction professionals from the Lean-implemented companies. The data was collected through a row and column questionnaire for the pairwise comparison of the barriers. The results were analyzed by MICMAC and the barriers are divided into four clusters: autonomous, driving, linkage and dependent, from which the most driving barriers identified are insufficient government support and lack of top management involvement and the linkage barriers are Low awareness, Absence of knowledge and Inadequate training on Lean Concepts. The developed ISM model depicts the hierarchies of inter-relationships among the identified barriers. Further, comparative studies on barriers in implementing Lean construction in small, medium, and large-scale industries in India are much recommended to find out if any other barriers exist that potentially influence in preventing the construction stakeholders from implementing it in their projects.