Development of an Integrated Performance Measurement Framework for Leanness Assessment of Manufacturing Organizations

Abstract

Lean manufacturing has been implemented across a broad spectrum of industries to newlineeliminate or reduce waste and stay competitive in fierce global competition. During last newlinedecade, there are many reported failures of lean manufacturing implementation because newlineof many factors like lack of clear understanding of main attributes of leanness and its newlineassessment, and lack of methods for leanness assessment. Existing leanness assessment newlinemethodologies do not offer a comprehensive assessment by integrating the assessment of newlinevarious functional areas of an organization. This study aims to develop an integrated newlineperformance measurement framework for leanness assessment and validate it by newlineassessing the leanness of an automotive component manufacturing organization. newlineLeanness assessment is not enough; leanness improvement is desired. The study newlineexplored the leanness assessment through a systematic literature review to trace the newlineevolution of leanness assessment approaches and scope of leanness assessment. The newlinestudy also identifies the hard and soft lean practices and prioritizes them using newlineinterpretive structural modelling (ISM) and interpretive ranking process (IRP) newlineapproaches. A case study is conducted to demonstrate the utility of the fuzzy newlinemethodology developed for the assessment of employee ownership (a soft lean practice) newlineand its improvement by simple managerial interventions. An integrated value stream newlinemap (VSM) is also developed for a complex assembly line to assess the its leanness newlineusing the concept of multi-machine activity with a single operator as a unit or work cell. newlineContinuous kaizen concept is introduced to improve the leanness of a complex assembly newlineline at an automotive component manufacturing organization. newline