The impact of Industry 4.0 and its opportunities are expected to be significant for manufacturers. A lack of empirical studies creates the need for academic contributions on the critical success factors of Industry 4.0 implementations and their resultant improvements for manufacturing businesses. This research uses case studies of eight implementations of Industry 4.0 technologies in Italy to supplement existent literature. An original data set was constructed using a purposely defined research protocol using plant visits and structured interviews. Continuous improvement/lean management emerged as a critical success factor for implementation, together with quality and flexibility-based competition, top management leadership, establishment of inter-functional teams, conducting of preparatory activities, project planning and training activities. Incremental/evolutionary and radical/revolutionary improvements in business model elements are possible outcomes of implementations, while addressing customers’ needs emerges as an antecedent to radical/revolutionary improvements. Managers will benefit from understanding how to achieve successful implementations and business improvements.

The aim of this study is to investigate the body of literature on lean published by the International Journal of Production Research (IJPR), which has been interested in the subject since its dawn. This review adopted a dynamic and quantitative bibliometric method composed of the keywords co-occurrence network and keywords burst detection. The analyses performed on keywords co-occurrence networks highlighted how research in IJPR has addressed research on lean over time and allowed a comparison with the consolidated research streams in literature. The burst detection completed the analysis highlighting the trends and most recent research areas characterising IJPR publications. The outcomes of this study reflected the evergreen relevance of lean; indeed, the latest research trajectories identified in IJPR stressed its link with the increasingly topical issues concerning industry 4.0, sustainability and remanufacturing. The analysis recognised in ‘lean Six Sigma’, and specifically in its support to the service sector, an under-considered topic, hence a scope that offers room for further study, in accordance with IJPR objectives.

As urgency in limiting greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide emissions has increased, greening freight and perishable food logistics activities has become an issue of interest. Intermodal rail-road transportation allows for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. However, one of the reasons this mode is traditionally not employed to move perishable food is because it is considered to be economically unsustainable. This paper aims to present a new transportation model for perishable food (named ‘traveling stock’), which removes the barriers to the implementation of the intermodal transportation of perishable food. Moreover, based on a methodology for quantifying the economic sustainability of the new logistics model, this paper outlines the assessment through a case study. The work finds that the level to which consumers appreciate product variety influences the extent of economic sustainability for the intermodal transportation of perishable products.

The literature discusses data science (DS) as a very promising set of techniques and tools to support lean production (LP) practices. DS could aid manufacturing companies in transforming massive real-time data into meaningful knowledge, increasing process transparency and product quality information and supporting improvement activities through data-driven decision-making. However, no attempt has been made in the literature to formalise the links between DS and LP practices. Thus, this study aims to overcome this gap by clarifying the DS techniques and tools that can support LP practices and how to apply them. This study employs a quantitative bibliometric method – specifically, a keyword co-occurrence network analysis – on a set of papers extracted from Scopus. The results obtained allowed the researchers to identify a set of DS techniques and tools that can support LP practices and to develop a model to guide their implementation based on the typical improvement implementation stages of the plan-do-check-act cycle. The model shows how to use DS techniques and tools in LP for: identifying areas for improvement and subsequent implementation (plan); enabling a better knowledge and process management (do); identifying/predicting potential problems and employing statistical process control (check); providing remedial actions and effectively applying process improvement (act).

According to the literature, in recent years, developing experiential learning has fulfilled the requirement of a deep understanding of lean philosophy by engineering students, demonstrating the advantages and disadvantages of some of the key principles of lean manufacturing. On the other hand, the literature evidences how some kinds of game-based experiential learning overlook daily difficulties, which play a central role in manufacturing systems. To fill the need of a game overcoming such lack of vision, an innovative game direct in-field, named Kart Factory, has been developed. Actual production shifts are simulated, while keeping all the elements peculiar to a real production set (i.e. complexity, effort, safety). The working environment is a real pedal car assembly department, the products to be assembled have relevant size and weight (i.e. up to 35 kg approximately), and the provided tools are real production equipment (e.g. keys, screwdrivers, trans-pallets, etc.). Due to the need to maximise the impact on students, a labour-intensive process characterises the production department. The whole training process is based on three educational principles: Experience Value Principle, Error Value Principle, and Team Value Principle. As the ‘learn by doing’ and ‘learn by failing’ are favoured, the theory follows the practice, while crating the willingness to ‘do’ instead of just designing or planning. The gathered data prove the Kart Factory's effectiveness in reaching a good knowledge of lean concepts, notwithstanding the students’ initial knowledge level.