Industry 4.0 triggered by Lean Thinking: insights from a systematic literature review

Abstract

Lean Thinking has successfully challenged mass production practices, by providing ‘leaner’ processes and supply chains, i.e. with less waste. Industry 4.0 has become an important strategic approach in the technological change of manufacturing and others. It aims to connect the physical and virtual worlds in industrial production. With such automation associated with Industry 4.0, questions arise about the synergy between this approach and the role of Lean in this ongoing industrial revolution. Therefore, a systematic literature review was carried out in order to identify the role of Lean in this scenario. The review was conducted from 2011 to 2019 timeframe and resulted in a total of 33 papers. This review demonstrated this as an emerging research area with most of the studies published in recent years (2017–2019). A deep analysis was undertaken to understand the Lean effect as a trigger for Industry 4.0. Main findings from a 15 out of the 33 papers revealed elements and facts found in sentences of such papers that act as this trigger. Additionally, a words count indicated that management, processes and people were the most cited words by the 15 papers, reinforcing the role of these key players in the companies’ transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Lean Production
• Lean Thinking
• Industry 4.0
• Smart factory
• 4th industrial revolution

Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundaçãoo para a Ciênncia e a Tecnologia.

Notes on contributors

V. L. Bittencourt

Victor Bittencourt currently works as an Engineer in the area of advanced manufacturing, following the completion of an MSc in Industrial Engineering from the University of Minho, Portugal. His research is centralised within the automation department and focuses on the implementation of Digital Twin models in discrete manufacturing, as well as the development and analysis of robotic assets.

A.C. Alves

Anabela Carvalho Alves is Assistant Professor in the Department of Production and Systems – School of Engineering – University of Minho. She is member of ALGORITMI Center. She holds a PhD in Production and Systems Engineering. Her main research interests are: Design and Operation of Production Systems; Lean Production; Industrial Engineering and Management Education with focus on Lean Education and Project-Based Learning. She has published over 130 papers and she is author and co-author of two books and two edited books. She supervised two PhD and over 60 master dissertations in Industrial Engineering and Management. Currently, she is supervising five PhD students and more than 20 master dissertations. She is member of the board of the Master in Industrial Engineering. She is a permanent member of the Scientific and Organizing Committee of the International Symposium on Project Approaches in Engineering Education (PAEE). She was involved in three R&D projects developed and in one in progress in partnership with Bosch company. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2926-4187

C. P. Leão

Celina Pinto Leão, PhD in Engineering Science from Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal, presently at School of Engineering of University of Minho, Portugal, as Assistant Professor. The research work in the R&D Centro ALGORITMI focuses her main scientific interests in modelling and simulation of processes, quantitative and qualitative techniques in engineering and in the application of new methodologies in the learning process of numerical methods and statistics applied in engineering. Currently she supervises PhD and MSc projects in these areas, being co-author of several scientific papers published in international journals and conferences.