Lean 4.0: Digital Technologies as Strategies to Reduce Waste of Lean Manufacturing

Abstract

Originated from Toyota Production System, Lean Manufacturing (LM) is a widely known production system that promotes efficient processes in the industry context, focusing on continuous improvement and value-adding activities to avoid waste. Industry 4.0 (I4.0), in turn, has recently emerged in the manufacturing sector, highlighting digitalization and its incorporation in industrial processes, ensuring improvements in production lines. This work intended to analyze the LM and I4.0 integration by studying the relationship between the classic types of waste with the digital technologies 4.0. Applying a three-phase methodology approach, the principles, attributes, and technologies of LM and I4.0 were identified. A relationship matrix and multidimensional diagrams were designed to investigate how digital technologies can contribute to the reduction of LM waste. A total of 27 associations were established and the emergent technologies with more combinations referred to Automated Guided Vehicles, Big Data Analytics, and Additive Manufacturing. Consequently, LM and I4.0 can work together and provide benefits to each other, highlighting that technologies 4.0 are critical to support waste reduction in manufacturing companies. The main contributions of this paper are the systematization and integrated operationalization of digital technologies in lean environments, aiming to optimize indicators of production processes through waste reduction.