The approach of using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) with techniques such as the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is gaining wide acceptance in many decision-making problems. This combined approach is followed in order to enhance the effectiveness of the decision-making process and is also used to deal with the sometimes subjective linguistic judgements that arise when expressing relationships and correlations required in the QFD approach. Previous uses of the QFD-AHP approach have been made in areas such as facility location problems and evaluation of hardware for mobile stations. Rarely has this approach been used in the field of Lean Thinking and in particular, lean thinking in the maintenance environment. The work presented here broadens the use of this approach by applying it in evaluating the importance of a set of Maintenance Excellence criteria and how they can be addressed by applying lean thinking. A survey, carried out at a maintenance organisation in the railway environment, acts as the foundation of the study. This exercise results in a set of prioritised lean tools used to address a set of ranked maintenance excellence criteria specific to the organisation in question.