- ## [Construction, Efficiency, and Production Systems - by Brian Potter - Construction Physics](https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/construction-efficiency-and-production) - ### Setups - Much of the slowest, most variable elements of the construction process fall into the category of “setup time”. - Setups are the time it takes to set-up at the beginning of a production process. Whenever a worker or piece of equipment needs to change what they’re doing, there’s a setup involved (traditional factories often strive to make large numbers of identical items specifically to avoid setups). - Construction has an enormous number of setups. Every time a worker puts down a hammer and picks up a saw, every time a crew moves to a different part of the building, there’s a setup. Every time the superintendent has to look at a set of plans, every time the crane unhooks from one piece and hooks on to another, there’s a setup. The months architects and engineers spend producing the drawings for the building is one long setup for the actual construction process. - Setup time can dramatically exceed the actual process time. A nail leaves a nailgun in a fraction of a second, but it can take minutes to get the material to be nailed into position. - If you can reduce your setup time, not only do you increase your throughput and decrease inventory, you make your production process more flexible, by making it less costly to change what you’re making. This is one of the key insights behind the Toyota Production System, which let Toyota efficiently produce a smaller number of cars with greater product variety. Toyota became so good at reducing setup time that they were able to reduce certain equipment change times from 3 days to [less than 10 minutes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-minute_exchange_of_die).