Lean manufacturing and industry 4.0: Facing new challenges from a shop-floor perspective

In today’s environments, which are characterized by great volatility and customization, the lean practices and tools conceived for High-Volume & Low- Variability (HVLV) manufacturing systems, seem to show important difficulties to adapt efficiently. Thus, it is necessary to consider the limitations of lean thinking in this new environment and to analyze how they can be overcome. Many researchers and practitioners hold the idea that Industry 4.0 can offer solutions to these current challenges; however, it is not clear which of these solutions is the most appropriate or which technologies can actually generate a sustainable competitive advantage. We attempt to evaluate how lean manufacturing establishes the right conditions for developing technology-intensive environments for Industry 4.0, as well as how shopfloor technologies, particularly clean technology (CT) and Information technology (IT), can be leveraged to address the weaknesses of the lean approach and to achieve improved industrial performance and a better competitive position.