Purpose - Lean manufacturing (LM) has attracted the attention of industries all over the world. Many operation managers have implemented or will be implementing LM because of the benefits reported by other companies or because their customers have demanded it. This paper aims to present a case study of a medium-sized valve manufacturer in which the decision of implementing LM is made by analyzing the capabilities, practices, tools and techniques of alternative manufacturing systems apart from understanding its effect on the decision areas of the operations department. Design/methodology/approach - A multi attribute decision making (MADM) model, namely, the analytic network process (ANP) has been used for this purpose, which structures the problem related to selection of alternative manufacturing systems in a hierarchical network form. In this problem, it links the performance measures or competitive priorities, decision areas, and the elements with alternatives available to the decision maker and provides a holistic framework for the selection of alternative manufacturing systems to achieve the competitive priorities of the organisation under study. Findings - From an extensive analysis of the results, under the given circumstances, it is evident that implementation of a lean manufacturing system (LMS) is a better alternative, as it would result in overall improvement in the performance of an organisation in comparison with the alternatives. Practical implications - This paper demonstrated a step-by-step approach of the ANP model using a case study of a small- and medium-sized enterprise, which makes it more suitable for managers to learn and adopt such MADM models to support their decisions. Originality/value - To the author's knowledge, there is no paper available in the existing literature that discusses the application of ANP in the field of LM. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.