A study on how organizations perceive synergy between Lean and Industry 4.0

Over the last few decades, the advent of lean spread over most manufacturing industries as a best practice for minimizing waste, increasing efficiency, and maximizing resource usage. However, in the recent past, Industry 4.0 is under debate to be taking over the existing best practices of the manufacturing industry as digitalized production systems. This has sparked concern as to how these changes would affect the well-established lean systems. Hence, through this research, we explore how lean would transition into the digital era in the apparel industry. The information and insights generated were used to map relationships between Lean and Industry 4.0 as well as to understand the strength of the given relationships using non-parametric statistical methods. The paper discusses key elements of compatibility as well as incompatibilities under different segments of both Industry 4.0 and Lean in the form of a comprehensive matrix. It also reflects the nature of synergy relationships compared against different levels of Industry 4.0 maturity.