Customer speaks: Daiwa House
Digitization in construction
How Daiwa House optimizes safety and quality with LeanForms
About Daiwa House Modular Europe
Daiwa House Modular Europe (DHME) is Europe’s largest construction company specializing in modular construction. What once began as Jan Snel in 1960 grew into a leading construction company that is part of Japan’s Daiwa House Group, the world’s largest industrial builder. With four production locations in the Netherlands and about 700 employees in Europe, DHME delivers complete housing solutions suitable for at least 80 to 100 years of use: From family homes and student housing to care and accommodation projects. From the ultramodern robotized factory in Montfoort, thousands of new housing modules roll off the assembly line each year.
“We don’t just deliver housing modules, but full-fledged homes of permanent construction quality. To maintain and improve that level, we have completely digitized our processes with LeanForms.” -Edwin van Duivendijk – Head of QHSE
The challenge: paper, lists and binders
Until more than a decade ago, much of the work at DHME was still done on paper. Safety reports, quality checks and audits were filled out manually, retyped into Excel and kept in thick binders. “We were working with piles of paper folders,” Edwin recalls. “As we continued to grow, we noticed that it could no longer be done that way. We needed structure, speed and one central place for our data.”
In search of a solution, DHME came in contact with LeanForms. The collaboration began in 2012 and grew into a close partnership where LeanForms became an essential part of the company’s operations.
One platform for safety, quality and more
What began with a few forms for safety reports has now grown into an organization-wide system with tens of thousands of digital forms. By 2025, DHME will process some 40,000 unique registrations in LeanForms, from safety inspections and quality checks to HR and financial processes.
LeanForms is not just something of the QHSE department, explains Anne Sophie(QHSE coordinator) . It is integrated into the entire business process. From initial project design to delivery.
How DHME deploys LeanForms
LeanForms is now deeply woven into DHME’s daily operations. The platform supports employees at every stage of the construction process, from commerce and engineering to production, execution and delivery. It is definitely an indispensable tool for:
- Safety and quality: forms for workplace inspections, safety reports, QHSE analyses, toolboxes, training and project evaluations.
- Production: digital quality checks, residual point registration and cancellations linked directly to drawings and project data.
- Support processes: HR requisitions (such as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and company clothing, month-end and packing list entries, damage reports and supplier reviews.
- Commercial and customer contact: registration of satisfaction statements and complaints, feeding feedback directly back into the improvement cycle.
From data to insight
The integration with Power BI ensures that DHME management and departments have instant insight into safety, quality, production capacity and supplier performance. The results are clearly visible:
- Improved safety and quality, demonstrable in audits and assurance processes.
- Work faster and with fewer errors through standardized workflows.
- Consistent processes that comply with the Quality Assurance Act (Wkb).
- International deployment, with multilingual forms for the Netherlands and Germany.
- Reliable data links with other business applications.
“We work faster, more structured and with more control than ever. LeanForms is now woven into the way we work. Back to the way things used to be? No longer possible and no one wants that.”
– Edwin van Duivendijk – Head of QHSE
See how LeanForms can digitize your quality assurance
The next step: building smarter with data
DHME continues to innovate. New links to systems and applications of AI are already in the pipeline. For example, the company plans to soon capture deficiencies directly on drawings and automatically link analyses to the right projects in Power BI.
“LeanForms is growing with us. We want to not only record our processes, but also improve and predict them based on data.” – Anne Sophie Verberne – QHSE coordinator
Conclusion
With LeanForms, Daiwa House Modular Europe has not only digitized its processes, but also taken them to a higher level. The construction site, factory and office floor now work with the same up-to-date information, which ensures more overview, quality and safety.
Van Duivendijk concludes, “Our goal is to make work within DHME comfortable and easy. With LeanForms, we are succeeding a little better every day.”
See below what that looks like in practice.
Want to know more? Get in touch
Ready to take the next step in digitization? Get in touch and we’ll be happy to help!
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