Development of a Lean Assessment Tool for Small and Medium Sized-Enterprises

Despite the existence of a wide variety of measures for numerous aspects of lean production in the literature, many researches and studies have proved that the use of measures in lean implementation in SMEs (small to medium sized enterprises) is very limited. The main reason behind this situation is that most of these measures are designed and tested in large companies without any focus on SMEs. Moreover, SMEs cannot imitate in total the models developed for large enterprises. In this scheme, the present paper aims at developing a new tool adapted to SMEs for lean assessment. The aim of this tool is to provide an effective measure of the leanness level of SMEs in order to drive efforts towards the achievement of lean transformation. Compared to existing lean measures, the proposed tool is simple with a minimum number of indicators that are confirmed as suitable to SMEs. Through the proposed tool, SMEs will be able to define easily and effectively "how lean they are" in order to focus lean change efforts.