Leanness assessment and optimization by fuzzy cognitive map and multivariate analysis

• A new method to assess and optimize organizational leanness.
• Standard leanness measures from the body of the literature.
• Fuzzy cognitive map and multivariate analysis are used for evaluation.
• A number of packing and printing organizations are studied.
• The proposed analogy helps managers to assess the leanness.

The strategy of organizational lean production emphasizes on increasing efficiency, quality improvement and cycle time reduction by eliminating non-value added activities (MUDA). This paper presents a comprehensive approach based on data envelopment analysis (DEA), fuzzy DEA (FDEA), fuzzy cognitive map (FCM), Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for evaluating and optimizing the leanness degree of organizations to survive in competitively growing market. In this regard, a comprehensive list of quantitative and qualitative leanness measures is extracted from the literature. The efficiency of organizations is assessed and optimized by DEA. A heuristic algorithm is proposed to obtain a full ranking of leanness levels of organizations. Accordingly, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to determine impact of each leanness factor on lean strategy. The approach has been found fruitful while applying for a number of packing and printing organizations, in Iran, as a case study. Apart from evaluating overall lean performance metric, the proposed approach can evaluate the impact degree of leanness factors on each other as well as the impact of leanness factors on lean strategy. The result show that production procedure among the leanness measures has the most impact on leanness strategy in the organizations under study. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that develops and implements an efficient decision-making procedural hierarchy to support leanness extent evaluation.