Lean supply chain and industry 4.0: a study of the interactions among practices and technologies

The ever-increasing competition due to the rapidly changing environment and businesses pushes to complement the adoption of Lean Supply Chain (LSC) with further concepts or tools. Among these, Industry 4.0 (I4.0) presents the same focus on the reduction of costs and wastes and on the increase of efficiency along the whole supply chain as LSC. Therefore, this paper investigates how practices, technologies of LSC and I4.0 interact with each other. The final aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of the interactions in order to acquire a thorough knowledge about the direction of their interrelation, which represents a current gap in the literature. Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) techniques are adopted for the analysis of the relationships between LSC and I4.0 practices. The results reveal a mutual beneficial interaction of the two paradigms considered. Indeed, the outcomes obtained show a twofold positive effect between the application of Lean Supply Chain and Industry 4.0. According to this, a series of useful implications are presented, intended not only for academic purpose but also for business application, including limitations and recommendations for further studies.