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Small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) that operate with modest financial investments and commodities face numerous challenges to remain in business. One major philosophy used by SMEs these days is the implementation of lean manufacturing to get solutions for various issues they encounter. But is lean getting sustained over time? The purpose of this research is to design a Sustainable Lean Performance Index (SLPI) to assess the sustainability of lean systems and to pinpoint the variables that might be present as potential lean system inhibitors which hinder the sustainability of leanness.

A multi-level sustainable lean performance model is constructed and presented based on the literature research, field investigation and survey conducted by administering a questionnaire. Fuzzy logic approach is used to analyse the multi-level model.

SLPI for the SMEs is found using fuzzy logic approach. Additionally, the ranking score system is applied to categorise attributes into weak and strong categories. The performance of the current lean system is determined to be “fair” based on the Euclidean distance approach and the SLPI for SMEs.

This work is concentrated only in South India because of the country’s vast geographical area and rich and wide diversity in industrial culture of the nation. Hence, more work can be done incorporating the other parts of the country and can analyse the lean behaviour in a comparative manner.

The generalised sustainable lean model analysed using fuzzy logic identifies the inhibitors and level of performance of SMEs in South India. This can be implemented to find out the level of performance in the SMEs after a deeper study and analysis around the SMEs of the country.

The sustainable assessment of lean parameters in the SMEs of India is found to be very less in literature, and it lacks profundity. The model established in this study assesses the sustainability of the lean methodology adopted in SMEs by considering the lean and sustainability attributes along with enablers like technology, ethics, customer satisfaction and innovation with the aid of fuzzy logic.

This study aims to develop and validate two scales: quiet quitting (QQ), measuring individual-level work disengagement, low organisational commitment and not going above and beyond in work, and quiet firing (QF), measuring employee perceptions of the degree to which their managers devalue them and when organisations intentionally create a situation to make them quit.

The scale development process involved item generation through literature search, review and interviews with working executives. The scales were then tested online by 264 participants from India.

In the quantitative analysis, the QQ and QF scales have good psychometric properties when tested with factor analysis, reliability analysis and Cronbach’s alpha. Furthermore, the convergent, discriminant and predictive validity of outcome constructs also showed significance.

This study found that the QQ and QF scales are highly reliable and exhibit good psychometric properties. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to empirically develop and test the QQ and QF constructs and offer implications for organisations and managers.