Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a visual, data-driven operational lean maturity model (LMM). The model intends to assess the level of lean maturity and the lean effectiveness in different axes of production cells (PCs).

Lean is a transformation journey, in which, change management and organizational culture are critical elements of successful implementation. Diverse maturity and assessment models have been developed to evaluate and lead the organizational transformation toward leanness. The main goal of lean is to create more value for the customers by removing wastes. Despite the important role of PCs in creating value, the transformation principles in the operational level have not been considered as deserved. Moreover, the research on lean assessments has used either inputs (tools and processes) or outputs (performance) to evaluate leanness. However, to evaluate the effectiveness of lean practices, both groups of indicators should be measured separately but analyzed together.

Considering the mentioned gaps, the findings of a thorough literature review on lean principles, tools, metrics and assessment models were synthesized to develop LMM for PCs through four stages: defining maturity levels; defining lean axes; suggesting main control items and performance measures; and suggesting enablers. A case study is carried out for gathering data of analysis and explanatory study of results. The qualitative and quantitative data on lean capability and performance results of two PCs was collected through direct observation and audit. To quantify the qualitative indicators of leanness, a scoring system is used based on the major and minor non-conformance items. Minimum of fuzzy membership value is selected to calculate the overall performance of each lean axis. Then, the results of leanness are compared with the performance of PCs to find the gaps between requirements of leanness and results of their practices, and to fill that gap by focusing on the areas of strength and those needing improvement.

Results of the case study show that the developed model can be successfully used to measure both leanness and lean effectiveness through assessment of lean-performance. The model can be applied by practitioners as a framework to design and develop a company-specific LMM.