Lean Construction Supply Chain: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Knowledge Base

Abstract

The construction industry known for its adoption of ideas from other industries has also adopted lean thinking from the manufacturing sector for managing construction supply chains. Towards the successful adoption of this concept, there is a need to establish the philosophy surrounding is application within the construction industry. Thus, this study conducts a bibliometric analysis with the intention of discovering intellectual progress within lean concepts, relevant authors and philosophies surrounding lean construction supply chain concepts. The study adopted VOSviewer software through the assistance of citation, co-citation and keywords analysis to present a bibliometric and network analysis. A total of eight hundred and fifty Scopus indexed articles were extracted and used for the analysis. Through the analysis we have revealed the most important authors, journals and articles supporting lean concept. Also discovered are the major school of thought related to lean construction supply chain which are; waste reduction, just in time, integration and pre-fabrication. This review points to the benefits of using bibliometric network analysis for unearthing the practices of lean construction supply chain. These findings contribute to using a new research methodology for analysing the contribution of lean concept to the construction supply chain.