A Fuzzy LARG Index for Assessing the Lean, Agile, Resilience, and Green Paradigms in Industrial Companies

Today’s sharp competition has forced organizations to adopt effective improvement paradigms, including lean, agile, green, and resilience (LARG). However, an assessment tool is necessary to monitor the progress of LARG adoption and evaluate its effectiveness. This research, therefore, developed an index for assessing the effectiveness of LARG paradigms by evaluating their principles and practices with experts’ fuzzy evaluations. Initially, thorough research on LARG paradigms was conducted to determine the paradigm principles and their measures and prepare a comprehensive LARG survey. The Delphi method with four experts was used to rate item measures of LARG based on a five-point Likert scale. The principles and measures of each paradigm were represented by triangular fuzzy membership functions. Then, defuzzified values were obtained for each principle and set as inputs in the fuzzy inference system (FIS) to obtain a crisp value for each paradigm. Next, the defuzzified values of lean, agile, and green (LAG) were input in the FIS to obtain a crisp LAG index. Finally, the defuzzified values of the LAG and resilience (R) were measured and then inserted as inputs in the FIS to obtain a comprehensive defuzzified LARG value. The effectiveness of the proposed LARG framework was validated in pharmaceutical and chemical organizations. The results revealed that the LARG index is an effective tool for evaluating lean, agile, green, and resilience paradigms for both organizations. In conclusion, the LARG index provides valuable support to decision-makers in determining a business’s weaknesses and strengths and guides technical managers to possible improvement actions to enhance competitiveness and sustainability.