Lean 4.0: A New Holistic Approach for the Integration of Lean Manufacturing Tools and Digital Technologies

Due to the highly dynamic and competitive environment, organizations are led to rethink their processes and strategies. In the industrial field, Lean Manufacturing (LM) is widely recognized as a traditional approach to eliminate waste in the value stream and ensure the efficiency of production processes. On the other hand, Industry 4.0 has recently emerged, incurring disruptive changes in manufacturing processes based on a technology-driven approach. The integration of these two philosophies to achieve organizational goals is interesting in order to guarantee competitiveness, especially for manufacturing companies. This paper proposed an integration of LM tools and technologies 4.0, considering the perspectives of the industrial field in the digital era. Based on a three-step methodology, which included technological and industrial mapping, it was identified 25 synergy points. From interactions of LM tools mainly with Big Data Analytics, The Cloud, Virtual Simulation and Augmented Reality, multi-level circular diagrams pointed out the main contributions of Just in Time 4.0 (JIT 4.0), Kaizen 4.0, Kanban 4.0, Poka-Yoke 4.0, Value Stream Mapping 4.0 (VSM 4.0) and Total Productive Maintenance 4.0 (TPM 4.0). Also, five attributes of Lean 4.0 were identified, highlighting the integration between processes, devices and stakeholders; waste minimization; and autonomous, pointing to gains for the organization from this holistic integration approach.