Fuzzy logic based leanness assessment and its decision support system

Manufacturing organisations have been witnessing a transition from mass manufacturing to lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing is focused on the elimination of obvious wastes occurring in the manufacturing process, thereby enabling cost reduction. The quantification of leanness is one of the contemporary research agendas of lean manufacturing. This paper reports a study which is carried out to assess the leanness level of a manufacturing organisation. During this research study, a leanness measurement model has been designed. Then the leanness index has been computed. Since the manual computation is time consuming and error-prone, a computerised decision support system has been developed. This decision support system has been designated as FLBLA-DSS (decision support system for fuzzy logic based leanness assessment). FLBLA-DSS computes the fuzzy leanness index, Euclidean distance and identifies the weaker areas which need improvement. The developed DSS has been test implemented in an Indian modular switches manufacturing organisation.