ASSESSMENT OF LEAN PERFORMANCE OF MANUFACTURING CELLS IN AN SME USING AHP

Lean Manufacturing is a tool widely used in manufacturing enterprises in order to remove any sort of waste and maximize the efficiency. After the lean principles have been implemented in an enterprise, it is very necessary to measure the improvements with proper measurements of it. Hence a methodology is required by decision makers, which can successfully gauge the extent to which the lean manufacturing philosophy has been implemented. A large number of approaches have been used previously which can assess the lean practice implementation. One of such methods is the Lean Radar chart which graphically indicates the gap between the actual and ideal performances. A number of originations assess the performance of various departments by offering them rewards in order to produce a healthy competitive environment. The current research work deals with the application of AHP in order to assess and rank the lean performance of various manufacturing cells in an SME producing bicycle parts based on certain lean performance assessment parameters namely, Material Flow, Visual Control, and Metrics.