P8: Seeking evidence for the role of ontological assumptions in the thinking of managers and professionals

Shingo's (1988) seminal innovation in the theory of production management can be seen as a re-conceptualisation of production as flow rather than transformation (Koskela 1992). These alternatives can in turn be regarded as reflections of opposing ontological positions which have dominated Western Philosophy holding respectively that reality is constituted of either temporal process or atemporal substance (Roochnik 2004)