The concept of lean manufacturing has been around for decades, but its adoption and practice vary significantly within different organizations. Despite the significent benefits of lean, many organizations still struggle to achieve maximum results from their lean initiatives.

This is when a lean maturity assessment comes into use. A lean maturity assessment is a process that evaluates an organization's current level of lean execution and locates areas for improvement growth. By using a lean maturity assessment, firms can gain a deeper understanding of their assets and create an action plan to move forward.

So, where does your organization stand in terms of lean maturity? A lean maturity assessment typically assesses an organization's current level of lean execution across three key dimensions: beliefs, practices, and technology.

Culture refers to an organization's values. An organization with a high level of organizational maturity is characterized by a growth mindset focus, employee engagement, and trust. The organization encourages and motivates experimentation, learning from failures different departments or teams.

Process maturity refers to an organization's ability to execute processes effectively. An organization with process maturity has standardized processes, standard methods procedures, and a powerful quality control system. The organization regularly monitors and evaluates and improves its processes to identify areas for improvement growth and applies changes as required.

Technology maturity refers to an organization's ability to leverage technology to support lean projects ventures. An organization with a high level of technology level has implemented new solutions that support lean progress, such as Digital solutions, Quality Software, and Data Reporting systems.

Using the three key dimensions – trust culture, processes innovations – a lean maturity assessment evaluates an organization's current level of lean maturity on a scale of 1 to 5. Here's a guideline definition of ever level:

Level 1: Initial Phase/Initial stage. The organization has just started its lean journey and has failed to make any significant benefits. The organization lacks clear statements, and no evaluation exist to asses lean results.

Level 2: Awareness stage. The organization has started become aware of lean principles and has integrated some basic lean tools. The execution of basic lean tools is Patch; however, process standardization still remains similar.

Level 3: Implementation stage. The organization define, and has a clear implementation plan, and drives change by leveraging third party or external assistance. An efficient, stable and improved organizational and social systems which inspire others to adopt the methodology.

Level 4: Integration stage. An organization prioritization high-total quality management excellence systems process, integrated systems with continuous improvement cultures and goals across whole value chain for stable benefits. Lean is incorporated across all processes. This stable and predictable process mature, yet results driven corporate culture and quality excellence.

Level 5: Excellence steady: The organization demonstrate unique patterns and well-understood models that enable scalable usefully long-term success with potential strong transformation with less efforts.