Lean Automation enabled by Industry 4.0 Technologies

TLDR

Lean Production has become the dominant approach for efficient industrial processes since the 1990s, succeeding where the complex Computer Integrated Manufacturing era failed, and today Industry 4.0 envisions a new production paradigm that faces skepticism. This position paper reviews existing combinations of Lean Production and automation technology—Lean Automation—and links key Industry 4.0 concepts to the proven Lean approach. The authors illustrate Lean Automation through examples such as smart watches supporting Andon and cyber‑physical systems enabling flexible Kanban scheduling.

Abstract

The Lean Production paradigm has become the major approach to create highly efficient processes in industry since the early 1990s. After the sudden end of the Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) era, which finally was doomed to fail due to its unrulable complexity of the required automation technology, the Lean approach was successful because of its high effectiveness by reducing complexity and avoiding non-value-creating process steps. Today, the term Industry 4.0 describes a vision of future production. Many people are at least skeptical or even hostile towards this new approach. This position paper gives an overview over existing combinations of Lean Production and automation technology, also called Lean Automation. Furthermore, it discusses major Industry 4.0 corner stones and links them to the well-proven Lean approach. Examples of combining both are smart watches for supporting the Andon principle or Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) for a flexible Kanban production scheduling.