Yong-Woo Kim

Professor

Yong-Woo Kim is a Professor and P.D. Koon Endowed Professor of Construction Management.  His research emphasizes lean principles focusing on interdependency and uncertainty in construction supply chain networks.  His research has been defined by his educational, and professional experience in production management and the construction industry.

Dr. Kim has published more than 40 peer-reviewed technical journal articles, 60 papers in peer-reviewed conference proceedings, and one professional book on design-build system.  Dr. Kim developed a new metric to measure the inventory work between trades called CEV (Customer Earned Value), and two international contractors have been using this new metric for their project control.

Teaching:

In his teaching, Dr. Kim engages students in discussions to cultivate critical thinking skills in his students.  He has also developed case studies in his scholarly work; those cases have been actively used in the classroom to improve students’ ability to apply construction management principles to real construction projects.  Current his teaching assignments are:

CM434 Lean Project Management (Undergrad)

CM518 Lean Construction (Grad)

CM520 Construction Procurement System (Grad)

CM525 Advanced Cost Management in Construction (Grad)

Research Interests:

My research & scholarly work stems from lean construction theories; my scholarly journey has been a journey to develop and disseminate knowledge and tools for managing the interdependency and uncertainties of construction processes in the domains outlined below.

Theme1. A Supplier’s Production Scheduling responding to a Contractor’s Order Variability (focused on Off-site Construction)

Collaborators: Dr. Zelda Zabinski (UW Industrial Eng); Dr. Chaoyue Zhao (UW Industrial Eng), Dr. Lingzi Wu (UW CM), Dr. Taehoon Kim (SNUT Arch Eng), Dr. Chung Ho (Turner Const, Former Ph.D student),

Current Team Members: Mohamed Mohamed (UW CM Ph.D student), Shreyas Bhore (UW CM MS student), Sean Zhao (UW CM MS Research student)

In this theme, I would like to apply my research achievements on planning reliability to a manufacturing production scheduling process as a source of variation.

Theme 2. Supply Chain Channel Coordination with Smart Contract (focused on Off-Site Construction)

Collaborators: Dr. Byung Rhee (Ajou Univ, Business), Dr. June Yi (Ewha Womans Univ, Arch Eng), Dr. Hun Cho (Korea Univ, Arch Eng),

Current Team Members: Dr. Minju Kim (UW CM, postdoc/visiting scholar), Sean Zhao (UW CM MS Research student),; Mohamed Mohamed (UW CM, Ph.D student); Aishwarya Fadnavis (UW CM, Ph.D. student)

Supply chain channel coordination is a new research area in construction management. I see this area as promising as the industry moves toward prefabrication and modulization. The major research goal is to develop a mathematical model for total supply chain costs to find the equilibrium to minimize total supply chain costs. Then our research goal moves toward smart contracts using a blockchain system in operationalizing our mathematical model.

Theme 3. Reliable Project Planning & Planning Reliability

I have established an international reputation through my work in collaboration with industry sponsors and international collaborators in the Last Planner System. The Last Planner System (LPS), which originated from lean construction, is a production planning and control tool designed to improve workflow reliability. My work in this area began with investigating management theory. My contribution to project cost control has been to investigate management thinking (manage-by-means and manage-by-results) underlying the project control tools from the perspective of the theory of project management.

In collaboration with Dr. Glenn Ballard, an inventor of the Last Planner System, I found through a theoretical study that the EVM (earned-value method) comes from MBR (mange-by-results) thinking, which was published in the Journal of Management in Engineering (Kim and Ballard 2010).

Other Topics: Project Cost Control; Activity-Based Costing; Sustainable Construction

Alumni:

My former Ph.D. students: Jang, Jin (2007, Ilyang Construction, Vice President), Bae, Jin (2008, Hyundai Eng, Senior Manager), Azari, Rahman (2012, Penn State Univ, Associate Professor), Ho, Chung (2018, Turner Construction, SCM Manager)

My former Post-Doc researchers: Kim, Sangchul (2007-2008, Hankyung National University, Professor), Kim, Taehun (2014, Chosun University, Associate Professor), Kim, Taehoon (2019, Seoul National Univ of Science and Tech,, Assistant Professor)

Visiting Scholars: Kim, Byungsoo (2009, Kyungbuk National Univ, Professor), Jang, Myounghoon (2011, Jeju National Univ, Professor), Cho, Hunhee (2014, Korea Univ, Professor), Chun, Sukhyun (2012, City of Seoul, Managing Director)