Last Planner System: Comparing Indian and Norwegian approaches

The Last planner system is currently being used in a variety of construction projects around the world with different approaches. In this paper, we compare the Indian and Norwegian industry because of their contrasting cultural settings, in order to gather experiences and formulate possible improvements to their LPS approaches. A general literature study regarding LPS and its components was carried out. Data from three cases in India and six cases in Norway were collected with the help of three case specific and one generic interview in India and two case specific and one generic interview in Norway. The study revealed similarities in scheduling and planning, root cause and constraint analysis, Project Percent Complete measurements (daily and weekly) during the meetings. The major difference was that the Indian companies use LPS in the middle of the project when they are subjected to problems and the Norwegian companies use it as a part of their system. A major conclusion drawn in the paper is that the participants felt more ownership to the schedule and the activities like a promise of what they could do, rather than an order from the manager. Furthermore, the improvements in both the countries came when the participants they were allowed to be realistic and say NO to the weekly plan.