Methodology for Transformation Processes in the Context of Lean 4.0 in Manufacturing Companies

The accelerated globalization of the production environment and the diversification of customer expectations lead to increased product complexity and variance. To keep costs and quality globally manageable, manufacturing companies are challenged to increase their effectiveness and efficiency continuously. The necessary transformations of the production environment require an organization to be open to innovation, flexibility, and change. Even though traditional production systems today are often based on Lean Production, market pressure demands the implementation of Industry 4.0 elements to meet the new challenges. Combining both paradigms in Lean 4.0 creates an integrated approach through which synergy potentials can be generated. The emerging Lean 4.0 visions must be successfully and sustainably implemented in the current organizational environment. This leads to a complex and multi-layered transformation process of an organization, which requires a clearly described process that serves as a roadmap for a manufacturing company to achieve its goal. This scientific contribution aims to present a holistic methodology for manufacturing companies to cope with the Lean 4.0 transformation, considering the normative, strategic, and operational levels as well as general and paradigm-specific tools and instruments. Therefore, the key influencing factors that affect the success or failure of a change process in the context of Lean 4.0 are identified and transferred into requirements for the methodology.