The current global manufacturing landscape is fast changing with growing worldwide demand for better, more innovative, value added and satisfying products. Therefore, industrial and manufacturing system must rise to meet these challenges and fulfil the appetite of consumers worldwide for the products efficiently. Manufacturing industries value creation must be geared towards higher efficiency and productivity. Industry 4.0 sets about bringing manufacturing capabilities to the next level, the fourth stage of the industrial revolution. This paper reviews the literature available on the Industry 4.0 (Industrie 4.0) initiative and sets out to identify the highly cited papers examples. Later, a review of the impact of Industry 4.0 technologies on Lean Manufacturing effectiveness, in particular, the elimination of different wastes was also presented. It is clearly established from this review and assessment exercise that there are much potential for Industry 4.0 environment to further improve the effectiveness of Lean Manufacturing initiatives to drive efficiency and productivity better.

The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is a useful framework that helps explain people’s behavior across a wide range of settings. The present study adopted the TPB to investigate factors that affect the complexity of the learning intention of workers involved with a lean manufacturing training initiative. Even though workers’ training has been consistently listed as a critical success factor for innovative improvement initiatives, very few studies explore direct workers’ learning intentions. This is particularly true within the area of lean manufacturing training. Hence, direct workers in an automotive parts manufacturing organization were invited to participate in this study, to which 204 workers voluntarily responded. The survey data was compiled and analyzed through stepwise regression to establish the effects of the different factors on learning intention in lean manufacturing training. It was determined from the empirical results that the participants’ attitude toward learning from lean manufacturing training and the perceived behavioral control factors positively affected the workers’ learning intention. Organization management could look into different measures and policies to stimulate better learning effects from training programs among the participants. Actions that could foster positive attitudes and confidence of workers towards lean training initiatives will be most helpful in enabling effective and innovative lean practices on the organization’s shop floors. The key theoretical and managerial implications, as well as the limitations of the study, are also discussed.

High volume, labour-intensive manufacturing operations pose several challenges for successful operations. It is an even bigger challenge to move away from manual dependency and shift towards automation of production processes. There seems to be no general agreement among researchers on what are the critical success factors (CSFs) on the implementation of advanced automation and robotics processes in the manufacturing environment. Success factors vary across the manufacturing industry and also organizational units. This paper attempts to elicit the opinion and perception of academic professionals with links to high volume labour-intensive manufacturing industry. A systematic literature search was conducted on the topic and semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts to gather their views on CSFs. Results from the literature search and interviews revealed that factors related to Organization Strategy, Culture, and Structure; Top management support; Past experience, staffing, and learning; Project management, planning, and control; Finance, and resource availability; Technology maturity and vendor support; to be critical for the success of the production process automation project initiatives. Findings from this study can be used as guidelines to ascertain CSFs for organizations and strategy planning. Manufacturing organizations can also use this study to evaluate their organizational readiness and enhance the level of automation further.