Ahmed Deif, Abdul-Wahab Janfawi, Rehab Ali An Integrated Metric to Assess Leanness Level Based on Efficiency, Flow and Variation Journal of Supply Chain and Operations Management, Volume 13, Number 1, February 2015 44 An Integrated Metric to Assess Leanness Level Based on Efficiency, Flow and Variation Ahmed Deif * California Polytechnic State University, CA, USA Abdul-Wahab Janfawi University of Regina, SK, Canada Rehab Ali Nile University, Cairo, Egypt This paper presents a new integrated metric to assess the leanness level of a manufacturing system. The new metric (EFV) is based on measuring the efficiency (E), the flow type (F) and the variability level (V) within the system. The quantitative approach of the metric is augmented with an expected range for the metric values to be able to visualize and position the relative performance of the system and track its improvements. A case study illustrated the practical impact of the developed metric and assessment approach. The results of leanness assessment in the case study pointed to various areas of improvements in the facility leading to different focused lean initiatives and plans. The developed EFV metric will enhance the existing leanness measurement literature, help manufacturing managers and practitioners to measure the lean level of their organization, and finally assist in tracking lean initiatives impact during their lean transformation journey. Keywords: Lean assessment, Efficiency, Flow and Variation. * Corresponding Author. Email address: adeif@calpoly.edu I. INTRODUCTION In the last few decades, many organizations around the world use lean philosophy, principles and tools in order to enhance their competitiveness and reduce their wastes. The implementation of lean management in a system proved to support practitioners in enhancing the processes, workers and the overall system efficiency. However, after applying lean tools and techniques to a system, decision makers face significant questions as to how lean their system is, what is the lean level of their system, and are there further opportunities to become leaner? Practitioners may know their system is leaner than before but they do not know how much leaner they must become. In the practice of lean management, the question is not only how to transform into a lean manufacturing system, but also how to measure the leanness level of a company. Thus, decision makers need a measurement tool or metric to assist them in understanding the leanness of the system and how much the system requires transferring to a leaner target. This paper proposes an integrated metric to measure the leanness level of a