Lean Manufacturing and Industry 4.0

Lean manufacturing refers to reduce the wastage in the production line like quality, time, cost, and resources. This helps to enhance the quality of the product and amplify profitability. The Lean approach is successful because of its high effectiveness, reducing complexity and avoiding the non-value-creating process. Generally, many of the industries face problems like breakdown, setup or adjustments, small stops, reduced speed, startup rejects and production rejects. Every manufacturing industry always tries to reduce the wastage in the production following the lean principles or the set of lean tools to identify and eliminate the wastage. In production factors, the lean 5s principles which are very important are as follows.

•    Sort
•    Set in order
•    Shine
•    Standardize
•    Sustain

These 5s are one of the important factors to lean manufacturing. They help to identify the non-value process and reduce them in the production line. Following this procedure, leads to a better analysis of the entire business. Standardisation of the industry helps to acquire the newly developed and integrated technology for a better production.

Dr Christoph Roser says

"A good implementation requires your full attention and support as well as a lot of time from both you and your people. If you overload your people and start too many projects at once, you will not get them finished, and even if you think they are done, they do not work very well. A key part of lean is to limit the work in progress to make the actual work easier."

Industry 4.0

The new digital technologies are collectively known as industry 4.0, which concise the wastage in the production line. It is also known as the smart factory, included with the automation, data exchange, cyber-physical systems and internet of things (cloud computing and cognitive computing). The term Industry 4.0 was coined at the 2011 Hannover fair.

Industry 4.0, refers to the 4th revolution that occurred in manufacturing. Development is most common in every industry, for example, a mobile phone is upgrading once or twice in a year, in the same way, the technology in industry 4.0 will also be developed. Analyzing the developed feature where it would be useful and be beneficial, will support in lean manufacturing. The ultimate goal of Industry 4.0 is the lights-out factory, where there are no people left.

The essential components of Industry 4.0 include Big Data, Data Mining and Analytics, IIOT, Artificial Intelligence, Cobots, Augmented Reality (AR), and Cloud computing.

•    IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), A secured connection to the network to store the documents and the inventory designs to be protected safely.
•    CNC machines which reduce the wastage by its accurate feeding range.
•    Cobot axes can be applied in manufacturing to reduce the human errors in the production.
•    Big data and analytics are helpful in the storage of large data, data analysis, data transfer and visualization.
•    Cybersecurity helps in protecting the data from any kind of breach.

Source: Google

Advanced technology now can be shown as operating the air conditioner at home by sitting in an office using a mobile phone, in the same way, operating the machinery at industry using various interface or feeding the production number and tracking the machinery count. Quality checking with large data enhanced over 600 parameters that influence quality. Usage of drones in manufacturing plants to detect the agents of non-value.

In a survey, 97% of the automotive respondents said, lean manufacturing would be highly relevant in 2030. But most of it was achieved in a very less time. The adaptation of the technology is different from each individual business. Most of the industrialist feel that obtaining cloud technology would lead to disruptive agents. To stop such attack on the server the cyber security is increased, in the recent times cloud enhanced its settings by adding the alternative backup and recovery option, if any unfortunate situation occurs. The cloud value is increased based on its speed service.

Everything in industry 4.0 is very smart like smart buildings, smart grids, smart machinery and smart monitoring which produce smart products. The smart production even helps in reducing the smoky waves from the funnel. Many industries, unfortunately, don't know how to use both lean manufacturing and industry 4.0 together to benefit maximum out of them.

Lean industry4.0 is a mix up of two different paths with the same management motive. Without knowing proper information about both paths and working with them is a great disadvantage. Learn and practice Leanindustry4.0.

Conclusion

The main difference that differs industry4.0 and lean manufacturing is, in industry 4.0 everything is related to the technology where it cannot take its own decision at the time being whereas in lean manufacturing it's the maintainer who takes spontaneous decisions to stop the wastage. Applying both together will increase the benefit.

Valuing people more than machines, workers will learn day by day by treasuring the experience contributing to know how to improve the system. Naturally, every employee tries to lower the wastage but Lean manufacturing helps them how to stop the wastage. As it is not involved in the heavy investment, even small and medium enterprises can get maximum benefit out of them. Management team, technical team and marketing team should strive for perfection.