Industry 4.0 impact on Lean Manufacturing: Literature Review

The requirements in the industrial world are constantly increasing and evolving. This obliges companies to search for continuously improve their processes in order to anticipate these developments and fully meet the needs of customers in the shortest time, the required quality with the least possible cost. Since the early 1990s, Lean manufacturing has been strongly endorsed and adopted by companies because of its simplicity and effectiveness. Nowadays, with the mass customization, lean manufacturing show its limits regarding producing highly customized products. In the same time, another promising approach appeared the so-called industry 4.0, which will integrate sophisticated technologies into processes. This paper attempts to explain two fundamental terms in the industrial field, Lean Manufacturing and Industry 4.0, and presents how the new technologies of industry 4.0 can support lean tools. Theoretically, the results show that lean tools and principles will not disappeared; they will just be improved by the emerging technologies to reach high performance.