Industry 4.0 is increasingly being promoted as the key to improving productivity, promoting economic growth and ensuring the sustainability of manufacturing companies. On the other hand, many companies have already partially or fully implemented principles and tools from the Lean management approach, which is also aimed at improving productivity. While the two approaches use very different strategies, they share some common principles. The objective of this article is to highlight the links between the principles and tools proposed by Industry 4.0 and those proposed by the Lean management approach, with a particular focus on how some of Industry 4.0's technologies are improving the implementation of Lean principles, depending on the technologies’ capability levels. As such, this study aims to provide a characterisation of the impacts of Industry 4.0 technologies on Lean principles according to targeted capability levels. The results obtained show strong support for Industry 4.0 technologies for Just-in-time and Jidoka, but little or no support for waste reduction and People and Team work. There is, therefore, a clear need to pursue the deployment of Lean management while improving certain Lean principles using Industry 4.0 technologies.

Considered an essential link in the logistics chain, the port has undergone various restructurings and evolutions throughout generations. Many economic, socioeconomic, political, and environmental factors require ports to move towards digitalization and sustainability. To this end, ports are required to change into smart ports that align with new Industry 4.0 practices to ensure their sustainability. This study proposes a systematic review of the literature on the emerging smart port concept to continue the work started by Buiza et al. and Molavi et al., aiming at a broader and comprehensive understanding of the smart port concept by business domain to fill this gap in literature. This research proposes 11 smart port characteristics grouped into 7 business domains. A definition is also proposed to update the concept.

In order to meet the increasingly complex expectations of customers, many companies must increase efficiency and agility. In this sense, Industry 4.0 technologies offer significant opportunities for improving both operational and decision-making processes. These developments make it possible to consider an increase in the level of operational systems and teams’ autonomy. However, the potential for strengthening the decision-making process by means of these new technologies remains unclear in the current literature. To fill this gap, a Delphi study using the Régnier Abacus technique was conducted with a representative panel of 24 experts. The novelty of this study was to identify and characterize the potential for enhancing the overall decision-making process with the main Industry 4.0 groups of technologies. Our results show that cloud computing appears as a backbone to enhance the entire decision-making process. However, certain technologies, such as IoT and simulation, have a strong potential for only specific steps within the decision-making process. This research also provides a first vision of the manager’s perspectives, expectations, and risks associated with implementing new modes of decision-making and cyber-autonomy supported by Industry 4.0 technologies.

Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet

The growth of goods transported by ship affects the entire maritime industry, which is central to the global supply chain. Faced with an increased pressure from the industry, ports need greater visibility on the flow of goods and logistics operations. To tackle this challenge, improvement opportunities as well as weaknesses must be identified in order to define an efficient data acquisition strategy that will allow port authorities to enhance their current visibility within their port ecosystem. This article presents the simulation of a digital shadow based on a Canadian port case study. The study uses the simulation of a digital shadow to diagnose a Canadian port authority’s current visibility, with an accent on data accuracy, in order to identify improvement opportunities aimed at overcoming weaknesses identified in a current practice scenario and then compare the performance of the current system with said improvements in a second scenario. To our knowledge, this is the first simulation study on visibility performance assessment in a port’s digital shadow.

Background: Port digital transition is central to competitiveness and sustainability, yet existing frameworks devoted to such transition toward smart port are descriptive, technology-centered, or weak on data governance. This study designs and empirically refines a comprehensive and novel ten-step roadmap relative to existing Port/Industry 4.0 models, synthesized from 14 partial frameworks that each cover only subsets of the transition, by considering data governance and consolidating cost, time, and impact in the selection step. Methods: We synthesized recent Industry 4.0 and smart port-related frameworks into a normalized sequence of steps embedded in the so-called roadmap, then examined it in an exploratory case of a technology deployment project in a Canadian port using stakeholder interviews and project documents. Evidence was coded with a step-aligned scheme, and stakeholder feedback and implementation observations assessed whether each step’s outcomes were met. Results: The sequence proved useful yet revealed four recurrent hurdles: limited maturity assessment, uneven stakeholder engagement, ad hoc technology selection and integration, and under-specified data governance. The refined roadmap adds a diagnostic maturity step with target-state setting and gap analysis, a criteria-based selection worksheet, staged deployment with checkpoints, and compact indicators of transformation performance, such as reduced logistics delays, improved energy efficiency, and technology adoption. Conclusions: The work couples theory-grounded synthesis with empirical validation and provides decision support to both ports and public authorities to prioritize investments, align stakeholders, propose successful policies and digitalization supporting programs, and monitor outcomes, while specifying reusable steps and indicators for multi-port testing and standardized metrics.