Assessing lean maturity in organizations can help identify the areas in need of improvement to meet strategic objectives. Meiling, Backlund and Johnsson (Ref. 1) proposed an instrument to measure the maturity of lean management in construction supply companies using Toyota's fourteen management principles. Bento and Tontini (Ref. 2) built on this together with other lean evaluation studies in the literature. This study uses a simplified model to evaluate lean maturity and makes a relevant theoretical contribution, both for technical aspects and for application. Though lean manufacturing is widespread in the business world, not much is known about its maturity in the companies of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The state has the fourth largest industrial park in Brazil, with about fifty thousand companies of different sectors. By covering segments of the manufacturing industry that have not yet been studied, this work contributes to assessing applicability of lean to any type of industry. The article uses the approach proposed by (Ref. 2) to measure manufacturing industry maturity. It looks at differences in the maturity of leans among small, medium and large companies to help managers understand which tools are to be used when adopting lean in their organization based on its size.
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