Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to verify the applicability of proposed lean production system (LPS) framework in the Indian manufacturing industry. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a cross-sectional study to collect responses from five major sectors, namely, automobile, process, machines and equipment, electronics and components and textile. They collected 200 responses to perform empirical validation from Indian manufacturing industry. They performed reliability analysis on the proposed framework of LPS in the Indian manufacturing industry. Findings: The findings revealed that all the elements and sub-elements have a high value in reliability. Subsequently, the study performed principles component analysis on LPS framework. The empirical investigation revealed that the proposed LPS framework has a high level of reliability as well as validity in the Indian manufacturing industry. Hence, the study concluded that the LPS framework is helpful to implement lean principles in a structured manner in any Indian manufacturing industry to achieve excellence in organizational functions. Originality/value: The authors conducted an empirical survey to verify the applicability of the proposed LPS framework in the Indian manufacturing industry. They observed that many researchers proposed various LPS frameworks, but none of the researchers focused on verifying the proposed frameworks. To overcome, the same limitations, the study verified the proposed framework with the larger sample size. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.