Lean Supply Chain and Industry 4.0: A Study of the Interaction Between Practices and Technologies

The ever-increasing competition due to the rapidly changing environment and businesses pushes to complement the adoption of Lean Supply Chain with different concepts or tools. Among these, since the Lean culture is extremely receptive to new technologies, Lean Supply Chain is being studied in relation to new trends such as Industry 4.0. In fact, Industry 4.0 has the same focus as Lean: the reduction of costs and wastes and the increase of efficiency along the whole supply chain. Therefore, this paper investigates which Lean Supply Chain practices are related to Industry 4.0 technologies and how they interact. Through the use of the DEMATEL methodology, this paper tries to answer this question with the final aim of providing a comprehensive overview of the interactions. This will provide both academicians and practitioners with thorough knowledge about the direction of their interrelation, representing a current literature gap.