2017/10/19 by Guilherme Luz Tortorella, Diego Fettermann, Diego Castro Fettermann · 16 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Engineering · #Quality and Supply Management #Digital Transformation in Industry #Sustainable Supply Chain Management
paper · doi:10.1080/00207543.2017.1391420
The adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies has been deemed as a strategy to increase product quality and make manufacturing processes more efficient. However, the way that these technologies are integrated into existing production systems and which processes they can support is still under investigation. Thus, this paper aims to examine the relationship between lean production (LP) practices and the implementation of Industry 4.0 in Brazilian manufacturing companies. To achieve that we use data from a survey carried out with 110 companies of different sizes and sectors, at different stages of LP implementation. Data collected were analysed by means of multivariate analysis. Our findings indicate that LP practices are positively associated with Industry 4.0 technologies and their concurrent implementation leads to larger performance improvements. Further, the contextual variables investigated do matter to this association, although not all aspects matter to the same extent and effect.