An empirical study about the relationship between lean management and industry 4.0

Lean Management aims at streamlining the flow of value while
continually seeking to reduce the resources required to produce a
given set of products. Although the adoption of Lean is not a new
concept, few organizations fully understand the philosophy behind
its practices and principles. The relationship between Industry 4.0
and Lean Management has been increasingly evidenced in operations
management research. To create a better understanding, the main
point of interest for this work is to investigate the link and integration
between Industry 4.0 and Lean Management, as well as examine its
implications on performance and the environmental factors
influencing these relationships in some companies especially
focusing on the mining industry. Based on the literature review, a
questionnaire was created about Lean Management and Industry 4.0,
which was applied in some companies in Brazil and Hungary, most
of them from the mining industry. The aim of this paper is to evaluate
the application of combining both methodologies, Lean Management
and Industry 4.0. The unique contribution of the paper is to see the
common areas of Lean and Industry 4.0 where there are research and
knowledge, but the application level at the companies is low.