– Lean manufacturing is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. In today's competitive global marketplace the concept of lean manufacturing has gained vital consciousness to all manufacturing sectors, their supply chains and hence a logical measurement index system is indeed required in implementing leanness in practice. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
– The present work exhibits an efficient grey-based leanness assessment system using concept of grey numbers theory.
– Such leanness estimation can help the enterprises to assess their existing leanness level; can compare different industries who are adapting this lean concept. The methodology described here has been found fruitful while applying for a particular industry, in India, as a case study.
– Lean extent evaluation module (lean index appraisement system) exploring grey numbers theory is quite new and not documented in literature before.
