A FUZZY GRA-BASED DECISION-MAKING APPROACH ON THE SELECTION OF LEAN TOOLS: A CASE STUDY OF INDIAN APPAREL INDUSTRY

Most manufacturing industries find a large quantity of Non-Value-Added (NVA) components compared to value-added components from their shop floor. Identification of best Lean Tools (LTs) from many available tools for their present manufacturing environment considering many wastes remains a multi-criteria decision-making problem. The problem becomes more complicated when decision-makers' preference for wastes and LTs is uncertain. Grey theory is the most predominant mathematical method to address this issue. This paper proposed a framework that incorporates value stream mapping (VSM) and grey relational analysis coupled with principal component analysis under fuzzy environment for LTs selection problem. The VSM of the current state and future state are compared to visualize the improvement. The framework developed in this work is illustrated in a case study from the Indian apparel industry. The results show a great reduction in production lead time (62.5%), cycle time (2.3%), NVA time (62.6%), and the number of workers (16.6%).