Leveraging Optimized and Cleaner Production through Industry 4.0

Manufacturing sector has traditionally employed the concepts of lean manufacturing for production optimization and waste elimination. However, the looming danger of climate change demands responsible production and consumption; oftentimes the environmental aspects have been ignored for economic gains. The fourth industrial revolution brought about a paradigm shift in the manufacturing landscape, yet there is dearth of approaches that combine the concepts of lean manufacturing, environmentally conscious manufacturing and Industry 4.0 for improving the production and ecological performance of manufacturing sector. This study has fulfilled this research gap by developing a comprehensive implementation framework that combines lean manufacturing, green manufacturing and Industry 4.0 in a harmonious manner. Using a longitudinal case study approach, the developed framework has been applied to an auto-parts manufacturing firm to achieve reduced lead time, value added time, non-value-added time and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. The results revealed that the approaches of first-in-first out (FIFO), total productive maintenance (TPM), smart production control, cyberphysical systems, 6R and smart energy monitoring are extremely beneficial in achieving optimized and cleaner production, where the lead time, non-value added time and value added time has been reduced by 25.60%, 56.20% and 24.68% respectively, whereas the carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions were reduced by 55%. The theoretical contribution of this research work lies in the development of a novel integration framework that combines the concepts of lean manufacturing and green manufacturing with Industry 4.0 technologies, whereas practitioners can benefit from the synergistic combination to achieve automation-based fast and environmentally conscious manufacturing.