Leanness assessment: a literature review

Purpose - Assessing the outcome of lean transformation journey has been of interest to both researchers and practitioners. Various qualitative and quantitative assessment methodologies have been proposed in literature to track and measure the degree of leanness attained. The purpose of this paper is to understand the evolution of this leanness assessment literature over different attributes and identify gaps for future research. Design/methodology/approach - A detailed literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers addressing leanness assessment was performed. Content analysis methodology involving a four-step process suggested by Mayring (2004) was adopted for this study. Findings - The number of studies in literature on leanness assessment is low when compared to that in the area of lean implementation. Assessment methodologies developed are of wide range, varying from simple qualitative checklist to complex quantitative mathematical models. Following the trend of lean implementation literature, lean thinking assessment literature is also getting transformed from process-level monitoring to enterprise-level monitoring. Finally, based on this review, a simplified leanness assessment framework is proposed for future validation. Research limitations/implications - Only peer-reviewed journals and conference papers were analyzed, while excluding the manuals, reports, and white papers from practice. Clustering of leanness assessment literature revealed that future studies in this domain would fall into two major categories, namely manufacturing leanness assessment and service leanness assessment. Practical implications - Practitioners can use this review study to choose a suitable methodology for assessing the leanness attained in their organization by controlling for the structural attributes identified. Originality/value - This is the first paper to review the topic "leanness assessment." The review analyzes the entire literature available on leanness assessment to summarize its current status and identify potential future directions.