Lean Project Planning in Shipbuilding

Abstract

Lean Project Planning (LPP) is a new approach for project planning that has been developed from the Last Planner System to overcome shortcomings in the Earned Value Management approach. In this paper, we investigate how LPP has been successfully used in shipbuilding of a so called Platform Supply Vessel. Due to the highly advanced vessel, we managed to stress-test the approach and found a number of improvements to be made. However, the overall judgment is that LPP is a success. By now, these improvements are more or less implemented except those relevant for the engineering part. When it comes to the engineering processes further improvements are still needed.