Abstract
Nowadays, Lean Manufacturing, Industry 4.0, and Sustainability are important concerns for the companies and in a general way for the society, principally, the influence of the two production philosophies, Lean Manufacturing and Industry 4.0, in the three main pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental, and social. According to the literature review done in this work, these relations are not well known and are dispersed by different sustainability’s criteria. To address this gap, this research proposes a structural equation model, with six hypotheses, to quantitatively measure the effects of Lean Manufacturing and Industry 4.0, in Sustainability. To statistically validate such hypotheses, we collected 252 valid questionnaires from industrial companies of Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain). Results show that: (1) it is not conclusive that Lean Manufacturing is correlated with any of the sustainability pillars; and (2) Industry 4.0 shows a strong correlation with the three sustainability pillars. These results can contribute as an important decision support for the industrial companies and its stakeholders, even because not all the results are in line with other opinions and studies.
Highlights
At present, Lean Manufacturing (LM), Industry 4.0 (I4.0), and Sustainability are important concerns for companies and in a general way for the society
According to Yang et al, in 2011 [42], that explored the relationship between LM practices, environmental management, and business performance, the results of their research propose that lean manufacturing experiences are positively related to environmental management practices
Will be presented both measurement model (MM) and structural model (SM) used, as represented through Figure 2, which are composed by five constructs (Lean, Industry 4.0, Economic Sustainability, Environmental Sustainability, and Social Sustainability), each one measured by three indicators, totalizing 15 indicators, all measured in Likert scales (1–5)
Summary
Lean Manufacturing (LM), Industry 4.0 (I4.0), and Sustainability are important concerns for companies and in a general way for the society. [The principal reasons and motivations to develop this study are related with: (1) There is no existing study using the structural equations modeling technique for both production philosophies (LM and I4.0) and the pillars of sustainability; (2) because the knowledge of these potential correlations can influence important decisions for the industrial companies and its stakeholders. According to [6,12] the principles of Industry 4.0 are the horizontal and vertical integration of production systems driven by real-time data interchange and flexible manufacturing to enable customized production Such data plays a crucial role for enabling different kinds of decision making, for instance regarding the prioritization of production orders, and tasks optimization, along with other needs, such as maintenance related to each one’s requirements [13].
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