Lean Co-Acting With Circularity? An Investigation in Product-Service Systems in Rental Housing

Circularity is positioned as an alternative model to achieve sustainable prosperity. Lean construction highlights not only building delivery with less but also contributing to sustainable development. However, lean is criticized for reducing waste only within organizational boundaries while neglecting the impact of waste beyond the boundaries. On the contrary, circularity originates to reduce waste in the system and is currently seeking approaches to implement waste reduction in circular production. To speed up the transition to sustainable resource consumption, the co-act between lean and circular construction seems evident. This research studies resource consumption in product-service systems (PSSs), which are acknowledged to reduce resource consumption. This research first assesses the ability of PSSs to slow and close the loops. After this, the research discusses the complementarities of circularity and lean to co-act toward the same goal. The multiple case studies demonstrate that PSSs have the potential to slow and close the loops. However, PSSs are not inherently circular, but each PSS needs to be designed to be circular system-by-system. Furthermore, the theoretical discussion encourages lean to co-act with circularity. The PSSs provide a system view to lean: to reduce current and future waste and to avoid value losses in multiple life cycles.