Industry 4.0 and Lean Production: an empirical study

This study aims at investigating the impact of the association between the adoption of Industry 4.0 and Lean Production (LP) on the improvement level of operational performance. To achieve that, we performed a survey with 108 European manufacturers that have been implementing LP and Industry 4.0. The collected data was analyzed through multivariate techniques. Further, findings evidence that higher adoption levels of Industry 4.0 may be easier to achieve when LP practices are extensively implemented in the company. In opposition, when processes are not robustly designed and continuous improvement practices are not established, companies may not be focused on adopting novel technologies either. (C) 2019, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.