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Corporate
Corporate survival in survival in
Industry 4.0 era: the enabling role Industry 4.0
era
of lean-digitized manufacturing
Morteza Ghobakhloo 1
Department of Industrial Engineering,
Received 22 November 2018
University of Hormozgan, Bandar Abbas, Iran and Revised 3 April 2019
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, 29 May 2019
Accepted 3 June 2019
University Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia, and
Masood Fathi
School of Engineering Science, University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how small manufacturing firms can leverage their
Information Technology (IT) resources to develop the lean-digitized manufacturing system that offers
sustained competitiveness in the Industry 4.0 era.
Design/methodology/approach – The study performs an in-depth five years case study of a
manufacturing firm, and reports its journey from failure in the implementation of enterprise resource
planning to its success in integrating IT-based technology trends of Industry 4.0 with the firm’s core
capabilities and competencies while pursuing manufacturing digitization.
Findings – Industry 4.0 transition requires the organizational integration of many IT-based modern technologies
and the digitization of entire value chains. However, Industry 4.0 transition for smaller manufacturers can
begin with digitization of certain areas of operations in support of organizational core strategies. The development
of lean-digitized manufacturing system is a viable business strategy for corporate survivability in the Industry
4.0 setting.
Research limitations/implications – Although the implementation of lean-digitized manufacturing system
is costly and challenging, this manufacturing strategy offers superior corporate competitiveness in the long run.
Since this finding is rather limited to the present case study, assessing the business value of lean-digitized
manufacturing system in a larger scale research context would be an interesting avenue for future research.
Practical implications – Industry 4.0 transition for typical manufacturers should commensurate with their
organizational, operational and technical particularities. Digitization of certain operations and processes,
when aligned with the firm’s core strategies, capabilities and procedures, can offer superior competitiveness
even in Industry 4.0 era, meaning that the strategic plan for successful Industry 4.0 transition is idiosyncratic
to each particular manufacturer.
Social implications – Manufacturing digitization can have deep social implications as it alters inter- and
intra-organizational relationships, causes unemployment among low-skilled workforce, and raises data
security and privacy concerns. Manufacturers should take responsibility for their digitization process and
steer it in a direction that simultaneously safeguards economic, social and environmental sustainability.
Originality/value – The strategic roadmap devised and employed by the case company for managing its
digitization process can better reveal what manufacturing digitization, mandated by Industry 4.0, might require
of typical manufacturers, and further enable them to better facilitate their digital transformation process.
Keywords Information technology, Digitization, Lean manufacturing, Manufacturing performance,
Industry 4.0
Paper type Case study

1. Introduction
Organizations implement and use different initiatives and business models to improve their
operations capabilities and long-term profitability. Understanding how firms’ business
Journal of Manufacturing
model, strategies and dynamic capabilities affect performance of firms, at both individual Technology Management
and organizational levels of analysis, is a cutting-edge research topic (Benitez-Amado and Vol. 31 No. 1, 2020
pp. 1-30
Walczuch, 2012; Ji-fan Ren et al., 2017). This understanding allows managers and © Emerald Publishing Limited
1741-038X
practitioners to better envision their competitive position in the current hyper-competitive DOI 10.1108/JMTM-11-2018-0417
JMTM and turbulent business environment (Ghobakhloo and Azar, 2018a). Technological changes
31,1 and the emerging innovations in business environments influence both firms’ short-term
performance and long-term sustainability. It is well agreed that when future directions and
alternatives in technology are ambiguous and uncertain, firms need to develop an
appropriate business model to support their planning for interacting with upcoming future
technological developments such as manufacturing digitization within the Industry 4.0 era
2 (Ghobakhloo, 2018). The term Industry 4.0, and its German equivalent “Industrie 4.0,” was
introduced in 2011 at the Hannover Fair, which became the focus of many governments
worldwide. Industry 4.0, and its international equivalents such as “Made in China 2025,” the
North American “Industrial Internet,” or the South Korean “Manufacturing Industry
Innovation 3.0” heavily rely on advanced technological innovations such as cyber-physical
systems (CPS), the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and semantic technologies (Li,
2018). Within the Industry 4.0 paradigm, contemporary manufacturers aim for a
decentralized, integrated, automated and waste-averse production system that supports
customization of products under the conditions of highly flexible mass production. Some
scholars such as Rifkin (2011, 2016) believe that the third industrial revolution has not yet
reached its full potentials to be considered done. However, the general consensus is that
Industry 4.0 is a hit rather than a hype (e.g. Müller, 2019; Xu et al., 2018). Schwab (2016) in
particular believes that majority of design principles and technologies that enable Industry
4.0 have already been used in practice. IBM for example offers extensive services in the area
of cognitive manufacturing to assist manufacturers with revolutionizing their production
processes by enabling intelligent assets and equipment, cognitive processes and operations
and smarter resources and optimization (Zhang, 2017).
Many experts believe that benefits of manufacturing digitization within Industry 4.0 context
could outweigh the associated costs and risks (Ciffolilli and Muscio, 2018; Rachinger et al., 2018).
Large companies that produce in high volumes can better achieve superior efficiency gains from
manufacturing digitization (Schröder, 2017). World-class manufacturers are expected to have the
necessary experience and manpower to create and implement Industry 4.0 underlying
technology trends. Larger firms also have adequate support from stakeholders to invest heavily
in new technological innovations. Being internally motivated and/or externally pressured,
smaller firms are also transitioning toward manufacturing digitization (Müller et al., 2018; Singh
et al., 2019). Yet, it cannot be ignored that changes in the area of production and value creation
processes, arising from Industry 4.0, are radical and may emerge challenging to the transitioning
manufacturers, manufacturing Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in particular
(Moeuf et al., 2018; Müller et al., 2018). Strategic management literature explains that SMEs often
lack a comprehensive strategy, Information Technology (IT) maturity and technical expertise to
cope with major technological revolutions in the industry (Tang and Ghobakhloo, 2013). In
Germany for example, about 10 percent of companies are currently actively engaged in Industry
4.0 whereas only 5.5 percent of German SMEs are networked and digitized enough to apply the
design principles of Industry 4.0 (Schröder, 2017).
In reality, majority of manufacturers, SMEs in particular, can only digitize certain areas of
their operations, such as digitizing their customer relationship management or production
planning and control (Moeuf et al., 2018; Müller, 2019). Transitioning toward Industry 4.0
requires the removal of functional silos, openness to change, supportive culture, collaborate
knowledge management, supply chain integration and data transparency across the entire
value chain (Liao et al., 2017). Yet, it is difficult, rather impossible, for an entire network of
typical businesses to achieve such level of integration and automation (Luthra and Mangla,
2018). Despite recent efforts to understand the mechanism by which IT investment decision
and process digitization can interact with corporate competitive position, the understanding of
such interactions is still limited (Benitez-Amado and Walczuch, 2012; Ghobakhloo and Azar,
2018a, b). This paper however reports the results of a case study that exemplifies how smaller
manufacturers even in developing countries can leverage their IT resources in support of Corporate
manufacturing digitization and development of valuable IT-enabled dynamic capabilities. survival in
This case study reports how recent IT tools, which act as the key technology trends of Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0, and their effective utilization can lead to the development of the lean-digitized
manufacturing system. Viewed from the strategic management perspective, this study era
illustrates how IT resource supports the development of IT-enabled dynamic capability of
lean-digitized manufacturing and further strengthens the corporate competitive position. The 3
steps undertaken by the case company to develop the lean-digitized manufacturing system
and move toward Industry 4.0 transition may potentially serve practitioners and scholars as a
stepping-stone toward development of a detailed strategic roadmap for a successful transition
from traditional manufacturing into Industry 4.0.
The organization of this manuscript is as follows. The study first reviews the concept of
Industry 4.0, and the evidence on relationships between IT, manufacturing digitization, and
lean manufacturing (LM) in this particular research context. The study further introduces
the case company and describes how this company executed the so-called “Manufacturing
Digitization Project” with the purpose of increasing productivity via integrating firm’s IT
resources and capabilities to support manufacturing digitization and leanness. In the end,
the study reports the results of “Manufacturing Digitization Project” and highlights the
lessons learned from this case study.

2. Digitized manufacturing in Industry 4.0 context

Industry 4.0 can be interpreted as the gradual combination of traditional manufacturing and
the state-of-the-art industrial practices that enables exerting control over the entire value chain
of the lifecycle of products and services (Buer et al., 2018). Despite the growing body of
research on Industry 4.0, scholars still struggle to properly define this phenomenon. In the
most recent study performed by Ghobakhloo (2018) on the concept of the fourth industrial
revolution, it was argued that Industry 4.0 could be defined based on its underlying
technology trends and design principles. Technology trends simply refer to the advanced
digital technological innovations that facilitate the rise of the new digital industrial
technology, known as Industry 4.0. The design principles enable manufacturers to foresee the
adaptation progress of Industry 4.0, and offer them the “how to do” knowledge in devising
suitable procedure and solutions required for Industry 4.0 transition (Santos et al., 2017;
Vogel-Heuser and Hess, 2016). The heart of Industry 4.0 is vertical and horizontal integration
and fusion of the physical and the virtual worlds (Fatorachian and Kazemi, 2018). The
architectural design of Industry 4.0 presented in Figure 1 explains that the latest industrial
innovations such as CPS, coupled with more advanced IT resources including Industrial
Internet of Things (IIoT), Internet of Services (IoS), Blockchain and cloud/big data
technologies enable such level of integration across supply networks and in a global scale
(Raut et al., 2019). CPS is central to the Industry 4.0 vision as it offers the uppermost levels of
surveillance, transparency, control and efficiency across all levels of production systems, from
manufacturing operations via machines up to production and logistics networks (Hofmann
and Rüsch, 2017; Marques et al., 2017). CPS communicates over the IT infrastructures, IIoT
and IoS and large-scale machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in particular, to enable the
so-called “smart factory” (Wollschlaeger et al., 2017) and supports the development of concepts
such as manufacturing as a service business model or the smart products (Gilchrist, 2016).
The smart factory is the reminiscent of a decentralized production system, in which smart
workpieces, smart machinery and equipment, processes, human beings and resources make
real-time communications as naturally as in a social network (Hofmann and Rüsch, 2017).
It is obvious that such level of integration among different components of a smart factory (e.g.
machines, devices and human resources) and the way they communicate and learn from
each other significantly rely on data acquisition and management infrastructure such cloud
JMTM
31,1
Big Customer integration
IIoT Data
Supply chain integration IoD
IIoT IoD IIoT IoS
- Quantitates
- Capacities
Real time inventory

Feedback
- Joint NPD Real time production Real-time equipment
management and control
- Delivery dates flow monitoring management
4 Suppliers
- Quantitates
- Spare parts
- Logistics IIoT IoD IIoT
- Orders
Smart Product

Smart
Factory

BAY 1 Automated IIR

efficiency tracking
Environmental sustainability
Material

PaaS
IIoT
Automated Smart asset
quality control tracking

Product and process

data analysis
MaaS
Smart
Warehouse

Customer pattern recognition

Customer
Smart
Augmented
reality - Human error reduction
IoP
- Maintenance and Remote Assistance - Time-in-system analysis - Future demand
- Safety management Simulation - Preferences
- Production scheduling
- Design and visualization - Quantities
- Setup and configuration
Figure 1. - Inventory and logistics optimization
- Human error reduction
- Training
- Deliveries optimization
- Reliability analysis
- Financial transaction

The architectural - Capital investments

evaluation

design of Industry 4.0

IoP

technologies, Internet of Data and big data analytics. This particular group of Industry 4.0
technology trends enables collecting, storing and more importantly analyzing a huge stream of
process, production and supply chain data in real-time (Ghobakhloo, 2018). In addition, data
mining for pertinent information acquisition, together with virtualization result in higher
production efficiency thanks to the early anomaly and system failure detection (Ghobakhloo,
2019). This capability in turn allows digitized manufacturers to maintain a competitive edge in
operations management and manufacturing productivity against competitors (Chen et al., 2018).
Industry 4.0 requires every “things/objects” to be interconnected, through various IT
infrastructure, to create a fully interconnected industrial networked environment all throughout
the value chain (Leyh et al., 2016). This means cybersecurity is vital for ensuring the security,
safety and reliability of communications among countless interconnected things within the
Industry 4.0 setting. Augmented Reality (AR) and related visual computing applications, as
another component of smart factory, broadens the boundaries of innovation and facilitate
process management and control, industrial maintenance and workforce training (Scurati et al.,
2018). AR and visual computing applications support vertical integration via the 3D Computer
Aided Design (CAD)/Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), 3D real-time simulations for CPS,
visualization of flows of information and materials and 3D scanning and reconstruction of smart
factories (Posada et al., 2015). AR applications coupled with the use of industrial robotics and
additive manufacturing would further allow manufacturers to shift their production model from
mass customization to mass personalization (Wang et al., 2017).

2.1 Manufacturing digitization among SMEs

The emerging research has properly addressed the technological developments of Industry 4.0.
Nonetheless, the industrial value creation of manufacturing digitization within the Industry 4.0
context is still an open research question (Kagermann, 2015; Müller and Voigt, 2018). Leading
manufacturers strongly believe in the business value of manufacturing digitization. This is why
they are heavily investing in the technology trends of Industry 4.0 for digital transformation Corporate
(Kusiak, 2018). Majority of leading manufacturers act as suppliers to SMEs and have SMEs as survival in
suppliers (Müller et al., 2018). In order not to be left behind from early adopters, SMEs need to Industry 4.0
develop digitization strategies and eventually prepare for manufacturing digitization (Mittal
et al., 2018). This is why SMEs, even in developing countries, are striving to implement era
technological precursor to Industry 4.0 such as intelligent enterprise resource planning (ERP),
high-performance technical computing (HPTC)-based CAD/CAM and industrial automation to 5
sustain their competitiveness in the Industry 4.0 era (Tortorella and Fettermann, 2018).
The process of manufacturing digitization in SMEs is different from their larger
counterparts, which is due to their unique characteristics. SMEs are significantly limited
regarding financial and human resources (Müller et al., 2018; Tang and Ghobakhloo, 2013).
They generally have limited access to the market information (Madrid-Guijarro et al., 2009)
and less frequently use strategic techniques such as financial analysis, forecasting and
project management (Ghobakhloo et al., 2011; Schröder, 2017). Alternatively, smaller firms
tend to be more open to changes enforced by the business environment and make a better
balance between fast decision making process and quality decisions (Love and Roper, 2015).
Instead of solidifying market positions with relatively incremental innovations, SMEs tend
to introduce radical innovation performance, which may favor manufacturing digitization
(Forés and Camisón, 2016). Contemporary research indicates that SMEs are generally
slower in deploying the relevant Industry 4.0 technologies (Schröder, 2017), and approach
manufacturing digitization with caution (Mittal et al., 2018; Moeuf et al., 2018). Although
SMEs are largely aware of the potential long-term benefits of manufacturing digitization
within the Industry 4.0 scenery (Müller et al., 2018), they are still concerned with the
newness, expensiveness, interconnectedness and value creation processes of Industry 4.0
(Schröder, 2017).

3. Theoretical background
3.1 IT-enabled capability perspective (IECP)
Whether it is called Industry 4.0, Industrial Interment, or Manufacturing Industry Innovation
3.0, the application of IT to every dimension of manufacturing is the core driver of modern
(smart) manufacturing. Manufacturers worldwide are significantly investing in modern facets
of IT and Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (AMTs), such as 3D printers, Computer
Numerical Control (CNC) machines, modern ERP platforms and M2M/Machine to Human
(M2H) communications to stay competitive in the hyper-competitive global market. Yet,
scholars are uncertain about the value creation process of digitized manufacturing. In reality,
there is a great interest for managers and IT experts to know how and to what extent recent
IT tools, emerging as a strategic differentiator, affect business performance (Ayabakan et al.,
2017). IT and operations management scholars have used different theories and methods to
study the relationship between IT and business performance. Resource-based view (RBV) is
the well-established theory which has been used extensively for studying the relationship
between IT and business performance (Liang et al., 2010). The early studies on business value
of IT assumed that higher investment in IT provides organizations with performance and
productivity improvement. More recently, scholars introduced the IECP and argued that IT
has an indirect impact on business performance through IT-enabled capabilities (Ayabakan
et al., 2017). IECP explains that deploying IT resources and assets (including networking
infrastructure, AMTs, digitization knowledge, etc.), per se, may not create business value. IT in
effect can augment critical organizational capabilities and processes, or interact with other
firm-level resources, to secure business performance improvement (Mikalef and Pateli, 2017).
This means leading manufacturers nowadays complement and integrate IT resources with
non-IT resources to create new organizational capabilities or enhance existing ones to better
deal with environmental changes and management challenges (Ghobakhloo et al., 2015). This
JMTM perspective revolutionized the way IT scholars viewed the business value of IT. More
31,1 recent scholars employed the IECP extensively to solve the IT productivity paradox
(e.g. Benitez-Amado and Walczuch, 2012).
RBV explains that firm-level resources should be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and
none-substitutable to provide firms with competitive advantage (Barney et al., 2001). Drawing
on RBV, and as depicted in Figure 2, IECP explains that IT-based resources, including modern
6 AMTs and even the capability of manufacturing digitization, are fairly available and
accessible to all manufacturers (Ghobakhloo and Azar, 2018a). They are regarded as common
resource and may not have the potential for creating superior productivity and competitive
edge. Manufacturers need to leverage their IT resources and AMTs to support the
development of valuable IT-enabled capabilities that offer higher productivity. This means
the implementation of advanced IT tools, AMTs and new digital manufacturing technologies
can generate productivity impacts for manufacturers who can successfully integrate these
technologies into their core operations and processes (Ghobakhloo and Tang, 2014).

3.2 Dynamism of IT and digitization strategy alignment

Dynamic capability perspective (Peteraf et al., 2013) roots in the RBV of organizations
(e.g. Barney et al., 2001) and explains that the term dynamic capability denotes a firm’s
competence in sensing, creating, seizing, extending and transforming its resource base to
survive in the changing and turbulent environments (Winter, 2003). Although dynamic
capabilities of different forms may share some common features and show some levels of
similarity; however, they tend to be idiosyncratic in details, and may provide sustained
competitiveness (Yeow et al., 2018). By reconciling IECP and dynamic capability
perspective, more recent IT value scholars propose that IT-enabled dynamic capabilities can
offer super-additive value through better business agility (Mikalef and Pateli, 2017),
digitization strategy alignment (Yeow et al., 2018), digital disruption alleviation (Karimi and
Walter, 2015) and innovation opportunity sensing (Roberts et al., 2016). Our analytical
framework in this study proposes that the dynamic capability of lean-digitized
manufacturing delivers value through a firm’s capability to purposefully alter its internal
IT and generic resources, processes and generic capabilities to adapt to the extreme
environmental uncertainties caused by the advent of Industry 4.0. Our in-depth longitudinal
case study further explains how a small manufacturing firm can achieve this dynamic
capability by better aligning its resources, capabilities and digitalization strategy thanks to
the three core competencies of sensing, seizing and transforming.

Generic IT-based resources IT-enabled capabilities Business value

Technology-based resources
• Digital assets (computer hardware, • Lean-digitized
smart robots, industrial controllers, manufacturing • Operational excellence
etc.)
• Knowledge ambidexterity • Revenue growth
• Communication infrastructure (IIoT, • Leagile manufacturing • Product innovation
cloud storage, industrial sensors, etc.) performance
• Proactive corporate
• Software-based assets (ERP, artificial environmental strategy • Customer relationship
intelligence, Blockchain, etc.) effectiveness
• Supply chain integration
capabilities • Marketing agility
Human-based resources • Market sensing capability • Customer satisfaction
• IT expert/personnel • New product development • Waste avoidance and
Figure 2. • Tacit/explicit IT knowledge
effectiveness minimization
IECP approach to • IT support and training • Improvisational capabilities
value creation in the • IT governance strategy
Industry 4.0 context
3.3 Business value of lean-digitized manufacturing Corporate
LM is a production management philosophy that pursues the systematic elimination of wastes survival in
from organizational operations via a bundle of synergistic work practices and principles that Industry 4.0
enable manufacturing products and delivering services at the rate of demand (Ghobakhloo
et al., 2018; Jakhar et al., 2018). For several decades, many manufacturers embraced LM as a era
vital business strategy that provides the foundation for operational excellence through the
standardization of processes, propagation of continuous improvement culture and 7
empowerment of workforce (Bai et al., 2019). The literature reveals that the integrated
application of LM and IT resources (e.g. AMTs, IT knowledge, IIoT infrastructure) has been an
effective business strategy to reach higher levels of operational excellence (Moyano-Fuentes
et al., 2012). LM is highly complex in nature, as it is composed of highly inter-related managerial
practices (Shah and Ward, 2007). just in time ( JIT), single-minute exchange of die (SMED), total
quality management (TQM), total productive maintenance, human resource management
(HRM), supplier relationship management (SRM) and customer relationship management
(CRM) are among the key underlying principals and components of LM (Ghobakhloo and
Tang, 2014). In theory, LM principles and practices can be carried out successfully in the
traditional manner and without benefitting from IT resources. However, existing evidence
recommends that IT tools are crucial for achieving LM effectiveness in the Industry 4.0 era
(Buer et al., 2018; Moyano-Fuentes et al., 2012; Riezebos et al., 2009). The integrative nature of IT
enables LM practices to integrate and mutually support each other (Moyano-Fuentes et al.,
2012). For example, IT facilitates JIT by connecting different internal functions in organizations
such as manufacturing, purchasing and material management. In addition, IT-enabled
information sharing offers lower information lead-time and decision making process time, and
thus, decreases in total lead-time within the entire supply chain (Ward and Zhou, 2006). The
emergence of maintenance management information systems and the application of big data
analytics in this context has produced great opportunities for more advanced, effective and
environmentally cleaner types of maintenance such as condition-based maintenance, reliability
centered maintenance or big data-based analytics for product maintenance (Campos, 2009;
Zhang et al., 2019). Industrial reports also indicate that modern manufacturers have
implemented AR in support of maintenance employee training as well as the simplification of
maintenance tasks (Elia et al., 2016). Recent studies have shown that application of IT plays a
critical role in the success of TQM (Sánchez-Rodríguez and Martínez-Lorente, 2011). TQM relies
on a series of information-intensive processes such as maintenance, continuous improvement of
processes, prevention of defects and statistical control if processes and products, and there is
evidence that IT is vital to the deep implementation of these activities (Perez-Arostegui et al.,
2012). In addition, IT can support TQM by offering a powerful tool for statistical management
of processes through quality control charts, and electronic management of different quality
improvement processes (Moyano-Fuentes et al., 2012). This means modern IT facets, digital
manufacturing technologies, and the development of smart quality management systems can
significantly reduce the cost of quality (Barata and Cunha, 2017).
In reviewing the relationship between manufacturing digitization and LM, the role of AMTs
should be determined. AMTs, as a subset of IT, refer to a variety of technologies that use
information and computer technologies in the manufacturing activities (Zhou et al., 2009).
Modern AMTs in the Industry 4.0 area are also referred to as IIoT (Buer et al., 2018). AMTs
enable manufacturers to analyze any critical data and inform each production center of how
much product to be produced and when, thus avoiding human errors that can occur when using
visual information (Moyano-Fuentes et al., 2012). Integrative AMTs such as modern cloud ERP
systems can support TQM practices because communication and information management is
inherent to TQM (Sánchez-Rodríguez and Martínez-Lorente, 2011). Proper designed AMTs
would enable businesses to manage their production planning and scheduling, as well as to
analyze their maintenance history to effectively perform cost analysis and produce future
JMTM projections of failure trends (Nikolopoulos et al., 2003). Advanced AMTs support JIT, SRM and
31,1 CRM by enabling manufacturers to develop the capability of supply chain process integration
which facilitates unbundling information flows from physical flows and sharing information
with business partners, conditions that further lead to information-based approaches for
superior demand planning and streamlining voluminous and complex financial work processes
(Ghobakhloo et al., 2014). Alternatively, non-administrative AMTs such as product design and
8 process technologies support core principal of LM through reducing human errors, product
design optimization and increased production accuracy (Ghobakhloo and Azar, 2018a).
In addition, the application of production or process controllers (e.g. distributed control system,
supervisory control and data acquisition, programmable logic controller and remote terminals)
together with industrial robotics and underling software enable machines to automatically
review production orders, identify product types and further load the appropriate program and
install proper tools without manual intervention, features that facilitate SMED and remove non-
value-adding activities from the changeover (Satoglu et al., 2018).

4. Research methodology
This study applied an in-depth long-term case study of a small manufacturing firm (KKCO[1])
to exemplify how smaller manufacturers, can develop the hybrid lean-digitized manufacturing
system and stay competitive in the Industry 4.0 era. Contrary to a statistical (cross-sectional)
survey, a case study is an in-depth study of a particular phenomenon that narrows down a
broad field of research into a more comprehensively researchable topic (Chetty, 1996). More
importantly, case study is used to test how well a theory and research model actually work in
the real world (Yin, 2017). Scholars believe that by examining one or few cases it would be
possible to identify causal processes in a way that is not achievable in survey research (Tellis,
1997). This is because the case(s) are studied in-depth, and over time rather than at a single
point. Another important advantage of case study is the investigation of causal processes “in
the real world” rather than in artificially created settings (Yin, 2017). More importantly, what
distinguishes the case study research from survey research is not so much the amount of data
collected or the number of cases studies. In reality, direct control of variables is what
differentiates the two research methods (Gomm et al., 2000).
The present study intended to investigate the stimulating impact of digitization process in
the LM context over a long period. As academic investigation on manufacturing digitization in
Industry 4.0 context is in its very infancy (Mittal et al., 2018; Müller et al., 2018; Müller, 2019) and
digitization value creation represents a novel research direction (Dalenogare et al., 2018),
employing exploratory case study research design is indeed necessary (Bell et al., 2018).
Our research goals necessitated the assessment of interrelationships among IT resources,
lean-digitized manufacturing strategy and business performance. The literature explains that
both LM and digitization process are extremely costly and resource intensive (Abdulmalek and
Rajgopal, 2007; Buer et al., 2018). This means top management team should be ready and willing
to fully embrace the lean-digitized manufacturing system and commit to several organizational,
cultural, technological and operational changes that are required. The case company should
therefore finance for many potential direct and indirect costs that are associated with LM and
manufacturing digitization, and should believe in the long-term benefits of the new
manufacturing system. The research team selected KKCO because this company had been
engaged with LM for several years, and more importantly, was willing to embrace the
lean-digitized manufacturing system and its prerequisite changes as a strategic priority.

4.1 The case company

KKCO is a small manufacturer, which was established in 1997 with the goal of manufacturing
different types of fasteners. Despite being small in size, and having less than 40 employees,
KKCO is an important supplier of major automobile manufacturers, such as subsidiaries of
Renault, Peugeot, Hyundai and KIA motors. KKCO has been engaged with implementation Corporate
and execution of different LM practices for over ten years, and has been certified with ISO survival in
ISO9001 and ISO/TS 16949 since 2005. This company produces different types of fasteners Industry 4.0
such as hexagonal head bolts and screws, tapping screws, weld screws, different pins and
parches and cross recessed head screws. The main raw material used in this company is era
carbon steel wire; however, wires with different metal compositions may be used based on the
customers’ orders. This factory applies cold heading manufacturing technique to produce the 9
initial pins. The press machines use the open die that requires one punch, two punches or even
three punches, to create the pin and the pinhead. When the final product is a screw, the pins
from the first phase of production are fed into the thread rolling machines, which use the
reciprocating die. KKCO uses a wide variety of press and thread rolling machines, and can
produce pins and screws with varying diameter and different lengths.

4.2 Case study execution

To ensure the success of “Manufacturing Digitization Project,” KKCO rented services from
KIC consultancy firm[2]. Because of the service contract between KIC and KKCO, three
consultants (including the co-authors of the manuscript and a manufacturing business
process specialist) – henceforth referred to as “the research team” – closely cooperated with
the KKCO for the period of “Manufacturing Digitization Project.” In addition, two
administrative staffs from KIC assisted the research team with data management and
analysis throughout the project. Figure 3 describes the process of implementation of
“Manufacturing Digitization Project” in the case company. The research team first held a
few meetings to explain the applicability of the lean-digitized manufacturing system to the
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and middle management of KKCO. Next, the project
feasibility meetings were held in which the CEO, external accounting and finance
consultant, quality control and assurance manager, production/maintenance planning and

Lean-digitized manufacturing
system feasibility meeting in
KKCO

Finding alternative business Is lean-digitized

strategy for remaining No manufacturing system
competitive in the Industry 4.0 applicable in KKCO?
era

Yes

Directing human Directing technological IT Integrating the existing Using a wide range of
IT investment investment and upcoming IT assets simple to advanced IT tools

Leveraging IT resources to
Sustaining different LM practices
increase AMT competency

Assessing the profitability of LM

Performing the cost-benefit analysis for sustainability project for the
lean-digitized manufacturing system at working year 2014 and onward
Ceasing the the end of working year 2013
implementation of lean- Figure 3.
digitized manufacturing Process of
system/assessing the
No
implementation of
causes of failure Lean-digitized Continuing with the lean-digitized
Yes
manufacturing system
lean-digitized
manufacturing system
has been profitable? implementation throughout the manufacturing system
working year 2014 in KKCO
JMTM control manager, chief accounting officer and inventory manager gave their opinions
31,1 regarding the following key questions of (Q1) Does the lean-digitized manufacturing system
advance KKCO’s strategic priorities? (Q2) Are there sufficient resources available to support
the implementation of this manufacturing strategy? (Q3) Does KKCO have the
organizational capacity to successfully achieve the manufacturing digitization while
addressing other priorities? At the end of the final meeting, and taking the opinions of
10 KKCO personnel about “Manufacturing Digitization Project” into consideration, CEO agreed
with the implementation of lean-digitized manufacturing system, which officially started on
late November 2012. For the purpose of this paper, we report the effects of implementation
of this project for the period of January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2017.

4.3 Observation and data acquisition

The present study applied a multiple data triangulation method to provide valid observations
of “Manufacturing Digitization Project” in the case company. Following the standard
procedure proposed within the literature (e.g. Fusch and Ness, 2015; Jick, 1979), data from
direct observations, a review of KKCO records and personal interviews with KKCO employees
were compared and contrasted in an attempt to monitor the progress of the “Manufacturing
Digitization Project” and identify its value creation performance. Incorporating an
ethnographic approach, the participant observation method was applied (Atkinson and
Hammersley, 1998). In doing so, the manufacturing business process specialist from KIC
performed a variety of observational techniques within KKCO in a weekly basis (for the first
two years of the project), which included prolonged face-to-face contact with employees,
participation in related meetings and direct contribution to related collaborative business
projects. Therefore, the study applied the direct observation method given the research team
closely observed and supervised the process of implementation of lean-digitized
manufacturing system in KKCO while it was happening. The research team as well as the
KIC administrative staffs responsible for data management frequently received numerical
data and qualitative information from different departments including accounting and
finance, production planning and control, sales and marketing, procurement and inventory
control, quality assurance and human resources. The socially acquired and shared knowledge
available to the research team in addition to the numerical evidence received in the form of
formal reports (e.g. in weekly bases for production data to bimonthly reports for financial
data) enabled the research team to continually supervise and micromanage the progress of
“Manufacturing Digitization Project” for the period of 2013–2017.

4.4 IT and LM background in the case company

LM has been the core manufacturing strategy in KKCO since 2005, and the top management
has been committed to providing resources required for the successful deployment of
different LM practices. JIT, quality management, maintenance management and customer
and supplier integration are the LM practices that KKCO has been relying on to improve its
productivity. During the working years 2005–2008, this manufacturer benefited from a
variety IT tools such as internet, e-mail, accounting management software, inventory
management software, Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS) and
underlying hardware infrastructure to support LM system. In early 2008, an in-house ERP
application in KKCO was developed with the help of an external IT vendor and consultant.
This integrative application was able to collect, manage, and interpret data from many
activities in KKCO, including but not limited to production planning and control,
accounting, inventory management and control and quality control/assurance. In late 2008,
this ERP application was initially tested in practice for two months. Given the satisfying
feedback, the CEO, who also was the owner, decided to put this application in full use in
different departments. Despite being effective at the beginning, this ERP project eventually
failed by the mid 2012 due to the employees’ lack of IT knowledge, lack of in-house IT Corporate
experts, the technical limitation of the ERP modules and inadequate and inappropriate IT survival in
infrastructure. After the organization-wide failure in sustained implementation and Industry 4.0
utilization of ERP in KKCO, the company temporarily rolled back to using the existing
generic IT tools. LM activities and the functionality of IT applications in KKCO for the era
period of 2009-2012 are briefly explained in the following section.
Just in time. KKCO implemented the Kanban system to improve its productivity, 11
particularly because the manufacturing model in KKCO is customer order driven. In effect,
the production style in KKCO is semi-fixed order/unfixed quantity replenishment. KKCO
had simple demand-driven system based on the Kanban cards which was operated
manually. Upon a particular customer demand, different Kanban cards were manually
created to signal required manufacturing processes and to trigger the replenishment of
necessary raw materials, inventory, dies, etc. However, the lack of an electronic Kanban to
computerize the Kanban system implemented caused decrease in the productivity
improvement anticipated. For example, due to some human errors such as lost cards, entry
errors and calculation errors, KKCO sometimes over-produced demanded fasteners.
Quality management. As an ISO-certified company, KKCO has been obligated to use
some standard quality management techniques such as statistical process control (SPC),
failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), design of experiment and many other statistical
quality control techniques such as flow charts. The heart of quality management in KKCO is
SPC. In this company, the SPC is performed across entire manufacturing processes. Despite
having the SPC implemented since 2006, the defect rate in KKCO has been, in most cases,
more than the acceptable threshold of 6.7 percent, as indicated in Table I. More importantly,
this table shows that, in general, the 2012 defect rate is higher than the 2011 defect rate,
which is in contrast with the concept of continuous improvement as the core principle of LM.
KKCO also benefited from FMEA across its manufacturing processes to reduce defects and
peruse continuous improvement. Using the severity, probability of occurrence, the quality
assurance personnel manually calculated the risk priority number (RPN). Based on the RPN,
the most urgent improvement activities were identified. This process was complemented by
Poka-yoke to control and reduce the human errors and decrease the defect rate.
Maintenance management. Maintenance management is an important dimension of LM
and KKCO has made some effort to devise and peruse an effective maintenance policy. Before
the year 2006, KKCO mainly relied on the breakdown maintenance and simple periodic
maintenance, which mostly included cleaning and lubrication. Because of the breakdown
maintenance strategy, the plant capacity was rather unpredictable and there were many
complications regarding delivery schedules, final manufacturing cost and quality of fasteners.
In 2007, the management decided to fully abandon the breakdown maintenance and rely on

Overall defect rate in 2010 Overall defect rate in 2011 Overall defect rate in 2012
Machine cluster name (%) (%) (%)

P5 9.37 9.35 9.68

P6 8.68 8.62 8.47
P10 10.14 10.04 10.15
P12 9.85 9.73 10.10
P16 10.62 10.34 10.06
TR5 6.57 6.15 6.81 Table I.
TR6 6.33 6.41 6.25 The defect rate in case
TR10 8.17 8.22 8.01 company for the
TR12 8.44 7.95 8.23 working years
TR16 7.30 7.09 7.60 2010–2012
JMTM preventive maintenance. In particular, KKCO at the time started to supply leading automobile
31,1 manufacturers. Accordingly, the company ordered a CMMS to an IT service provider. This
CMMS was designed based on the operations and processes of KKCO to ensure its
compatibility. Yet, many complications were observed in the way maintenance activities were
performed. Despite the preventive maintenance strategy, many unpredicted breakdowns and
repair happened even with the use of the CMMS. The CMMS was not user friendly and in
12 effect only one client at the time was able to fully operate the software. Since KKCO at the time
used another software for inventory management, the CMMS was designed to receive
spare-parts inventory statistics from the inventory management software. Yet, the CMMS had
frequent issues synchronizing with the inventory management software and was rather
ineffective in repair scheduling and overall management of maintenance workload. KKCO
eventually ceased the use of the CMMS by the year 2010, and maintenance management
activities were again performed manually, causing many problems such as poor performance
in recording maintenance events, patterns and behaviors, ineffective spare-part management
and poor execution of maintenance improvements. For example, KKCO frequently
experienced complications in performing preventive maintenance in which a particular part
should have been replaced based on the periodic maintenance plan, but the part was out of
stock. The lack of a comprehensive CMMS in KKCO caused many other issues. For example,
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) for different machines, in some cases, was inaccurate
in KKCO, since the process of calculating this metric was manual and subjected to human
error. In few cases, the OEE of close to 100 percent was observed in KKCO, which is
practically impossible, given the overall OEE of 85 percent for a machine is regarded as world-
class OEE (www.oee.com).
Human resource management. KKCO indeed fell rather short in the HRM department.
There were only three distinct HRM practices frequently employed in the company by the
year 2012. First, top management firmly believed in the recruitment of talented, multi-skilled
and younger workforce. In particular, KKCO had a good relationship with different
engineering departments in local universities and colleges, and was open to accepting
talented students for internship and future employment. Second, top management was
highly committed to human resource training and development. Sending employees to
outside workshops and hiring consultants were examples of human resource training and
development practices in KKCO. Yet these pieces of training were mostly provided to office
personal. Third, top management believed in information sharing and teamwork. For
example, brainstorming sessions, with the presence of shop-floor personnel and office
employees, were frequently held to tackle existing problems.
Supplier and customer integration. As stated previously, production style in KKCO is semi-
fixed order/unfixed quantity. The company’s customers are usually fixed, and some customers
have been ordering the same product for more than ten years. As an ISO-certified manufacturer,
KKCO is extremely vigilant about the quality of products it delivers to customers. Since KKCO
is very close to its customer, it continuously receives feedback from customers regarding the
quality of products. It is also a common practice for the company to allow auditors from
customers to actively monitor the productions process of their ordered products at KKCO. The
company however did not benefit from any particular technology in managing its interactions
with customers. Most contacts were done using phone calls and most payments were received
as paycheck delivered to KKCO. The new orders were usually delivered via phone call or official
letters manually mailed. Customers also delivered the specification of their order (e.g. the
fastener specification and design) as printed documents to KKCO.
The case company also used similar methods to approach its suppliers. KKCO purchased
majority of wires needed from domestic suppliers. The orders were placed via phone calls
and the payment to suppliers was usually made by periodic paychecks delivered to them.
KKCO, however, imported majority of machine spare-parts, punching dies, reciprocating Corporate
dies and some special types of wires from China, South Korea and Taiwan. Despite being in survival in
contact with its foreign suppliers, KKCO relied on trade intermediary firms to perform Industry 4.0
ordering and importing required goods. In doing so, orders and designs were sent to the
trade intermediary firms as printed documents. It should be stated that by 2012, KKCO had era
little to no IT infrastructure to better integrate with its suppliers and customers given CRM
and SRM are nowadays heavily supported by the IT-enabled information flow integration, 13
physical flow integration, financial integration and process integration among a hub firm
and its customers and suppliers, conditions that were lacking in KKCO at the time.

5. Manufacturing digitization project

KKCO hired external experts from academia and industry to understand how the company
should make its transition from where they are now to where they want to be through the
digitization processes. After reviewing the long-term strategic goals of KKCO, cost-benefit
analysis of the project and several meetings with the key company’s personnel and external
experts, the overall strategic roadmap for the “Manufacturing Digitization Project” in KKCO
was developed as Figure 4.
The core principle of LM effectiveness project in KKCO was to effectively benefit from IT
resources to support and progress different LM practices and subsequently improve
business performance. In doing so, LM effectiveness was planned to achieve via:
• investment in IT infrastructure, and implementation of a modern cloud ERP solution
and AMTs across the company;
• investment in plant-wide IT training to enhance IT expertise across the plant and
making employees more competent to use existing and upcoming IT tools;
• enhancing IT investment efficiency via increasing the usage frequency of existing IT
resources, and ensuring the effective use of upcoming AMTs and IIoT applications; and
• Implementing simple to complex IT applications to support any manufacturing
process in each part of the plant, whenever necessary.
“Manufacturing Digitization Project” was started with investment in human and
technological IT resources to fully implement and use a modern cloud ERP. Since the
company chose cloud ERP over on-premise ERP, it managed to reduce the upfront costs of
necessary IT infrastructure such as hardware and data servers. KKCO did not face many
severe challenges while implementing the cloud ERP. The ERP solution selected was
adequately maintainable, and required reasonable support expenses. The cloud feature
allowed the solution to be accessed remotely, which enabled the company to expand
geographically. The cloud ERP solution in KKCO consisted of eight modules including
HRM, inventory management, production management, sale and marketing, procurement,
accounting and finance supply chain management and CRM. KKCO top management was
well aware that organization-wide commitment to the use of ERP has been the key element
of ERP implementation success. Despite being challenging at the beginning, the top
management in association with the research team ensured that employees accept the
changes caused by switching to ERP. After one challenging year, and by the end of working
year 2013, different manufacturing operations such as inventory control, operation
sequencing, shop-floor data collection, order monitoring, production scheduling and
material requirements planning, among many other daily operations, were executed via the
organization-wide use of the ERP solution. Despite the overall success in the implementation
of the ERP solution, some employees showed resistance to embrace and use the new ERP,
and management made considerable effort to ensure that the ERP system is fully accepted
 14
31,1
JMTM

Figure 4.
KKCO strategic

“Manufacturing
roadmap for the

Digitization Project”
Defining functional needs and priorities
Planning business expansion and required by lean-digitized manufacturing
diversification within lean-digitized
manufacturing environment
Planning technological transition required
by lean-digitized manufacturing

Defining lean-digitization
strategies
Assessment of IT
(hardware, software, IloT)
infrastructure
Considering different business
segments that need
networking and integration
IT governance strategy
Cost-benefit assessment of
new IT infrastructure
Cross-functional IT
integration
IT alignment across
Data consistency value chain
Activity integration across
Financial flow integration
across supply chain
Shared managerial
knowledge management
Shared vision
Shared manufacturing
knowledge management
Assessment of Human Resource
(HR) competencies for lean-
digitized manufacturing
Establishing a
timeline for different stages Conducting the cost-benefit analysis of
Appointing an lean-digitized of the transition transitioning to lean-digitized manufacturing
manufacturing transition
management team Manufacturing
Facilitating connectivity and
execution system
interoperability across the organization
Facilitating and managing
Planning possible organizational
restructuralization in accordance changes required by lean-digitized
with lean-digitized manufacturing manufacturing Industry 4.0
Intelligent ERP
Identifying the most meaningful
Controlling manufacturing
approach for using existing IT
processes via programmable
infrastructure
Harmonizing and integrating logic controller
existing and newly added IT
infrastructure
Vertical lloT strategies Production process supervision
Adding new types of IT
via SCADA
infrastructure when needed Collecting machine
Establishing smart level data
connection across the Production process supervision
Physical flow integration
factory via distributed control system
across supply chain
Information sharing across Data analytics
supply chain Smart intra-factory logistics via
autonomous mobile units
Lead-Digitized
supply chain Manufacturing
Customer and supplier
integration
System
Manufacturing digitization
Time-cost assessment for training
employees
Training HRs that lack required expertise
Employing skilled HRs wherever (purposeful training)
needed
(purposeful hiring) Multi-skilled employees

HR talent recognition and Cross-functional training

management Employee involvement and
empowerment
by all users, which continued all throughout the working year 2015. In addition, the Corporate
company consistently benefited from internal IT experts and external service providers for survival in
system debugging. Industry 4.0
The HRM module and its numerous tools such as employee performance evaluations and
tracking, e-payroll service and employee engagement tool enabled KKCO to create in-depth era
reports for the purpose of HRM audits and modify workflows and human resource
processes according to its particular business requirements. The company also supported 15
quality management practices via complementing the ERP quality management module
with several statistical quality control software applications, such as IBM SPSS and
WinSPC. KKCO further supported the development of lean-digitized manufacturing system
through investment in enhancing its AMT competency. KKCO heavily invested in HPTC
CAD to support the implementation of the most recent CAD software. Consistently,
advanced CAD solutions, AutoCAD and SolidWorks as an example, were purchased to
facilitate the design of new products, dies and spare-parts. Employees in charge of handing
manufacturing designs in KKCO were sent for intensive CAD workshops for effective
utilization of the CAD software. After mid-2013, any design of spare parts, press dies, rolling
dies and new products were performed via CAD applications. The company also
implemented a wide variety of industrial sensors (e.g. proximity, pressure, temperature,
current and voltage and vibration) on major production equipment such as CNC and press
machines to monitor the real-time status of the equipment. Besides using machine vision for
quality control purposes, the company also implemented an intelligent camera technology to
monitor and control the wire stands and feeders status to remotely transmit the data to the
inventory management and control module that autonomy reorders wires when required.
Since KKCO benefited from cloud ERP and implemented IIoT applications that rely on a
tremendous number of interconnected things within and across organizational boundaries,
considerable investments were made in cybersecurity tools (antivirus software, firewall, etc.)
to ensure the security, safety and reliability of communications.

5.1 Manufacturing digitization challenges observed

As expected, KKCO and the research team faced several challenges while progressing with
“Manufacturing Digitization Project.” It was observed that none of the challenges was
related to the availability of technology. The most common challenges faced were, as briefly
explained in the following, due to internal issues:
• Manufacturing digitization was extremely costly. The company had to face the costs of
dismantling some of outdated previous physical infrastructure, new digital hardware,
software applications, cybersecurity, new system integration and debugging, system
maintenance, licensing, external experts and consultation and in-house training of
employees among many other expenses. All of these resulted in a few budgetary
constraints that limited some parts of KKCO’s digital transformation journey.
• We noticed manufacturing digitization requires fewer bureaucratic practices and
structures while accepting knowledge-based and collaborative learning paradigms
and designs. Our observations showed that manufacturing digitization is people-
centric in the sense that employees who are ready to embrace the changes caused by
digitization would be more willing to participate in the change process and
demonstrate a high level of involvement. Unfortunately, the research team was
unable to completely erase doubt and uncertainty toward manufacturing digitization
from all of key employees’ minds within KKCO. Although research team and top
management tried to alleviate the resistant employees by being supportive,
consistent and transparent throughout the project; however, management had to fire
a few employees who terminally resisted changing.
JMTM • Manufacturing digitization brought along its own myriad of technical challenges and
31,1 turned out to be extremely knowledge intensive. KKCO was forced to provide
extensive training for its employees to be digitally literate and help them build the
skills needed for digital transformation. Since KKCO did not possess the required
expertise internally to take on a digital transformation, the company made significant
investments for new hires as well as strategic and technological partnerships.
16 • In the lean-digitized manufacturing context at KKCO, different control levels needed
to exchange massive quantities of data vertically and horizontally. The lack of
seamless integration capability to integrating existing legacy networks, equipment
and processes with new networking infrastructure, machine controllers and
administrative AMTs (e.g. cloud ERP) into a unified integrated digital ecosystem that
creates a seamless stream of data was proven extremely difficult.
• Equipping existing manufacturing equipment with smart industrial sensors,
controllers and data transmission modules was significantly costly and time-
consuming. KKCO was initially unable to evaluate its existing operations technology
and develop clear equipment upgrading and equipment purchasing criteria for
manufacturing digitization. More importantly, it took KKCO more than two years to
fully leverage its digital technologies and knowledge resources in support of
manufacturing digitization. Overall, digitalization maturity in KKCO was a gradual
process that was developed within the organization and with the help of external
experts over a long period.

5.2 Productivity impacts of manufacturing digitization

This section reports how the manufacturing digitization and the implementation of lean-
digitized manufacturing business model in KKCO has resulted in the productivity
improvement of different LM practices.
Just in time. The ERP system implemented in KKCO supported the electronic Kanban. In
effect, one of the features of this application is the online Kanban board that visualizes work
and workflow, as well as optimizes the way manufacturing processes for a specific order is
done. As a result, human errors such as lost Kanban cards, entry errors and calculation
inaccuracies were eliminated from processes. This application, together with the application of
industrial sensors for the real-time monitoring of production volumes enabled KKCO to
decrease unfinished work in process and problems created by task switching and order
reprioritizing. It also enhanced the flow of work by enabling work-in-process limits, tracking
lead times and analysis of workflow. In case of receiving a high value order, the e-Kanban
enabled KKCO employees to better refocus their effort. It also enabled the analysis of the flow
for different manufacturing orders and enabled the evaluation of effectiveness of processes for
each order. More importantly, the ERP system and administrative and production AMTs
provided KKCO with internal integration of different functions across the plant, including
materials management, purchasing, quality management and order delivery.
Quality management. KKCO made a major attempt to support statistical quality control
via IT. To address the issue of human errors in manual SPC, KKCO purchased and
implemented a real-time SPC software (WinSPC). Using the computers located in the shop-
floor, operators provided the quality management department with the real-time, on the
shop-floor SPC data point. This SPC software offered valuable features such as
automatically creating a number of charts, such as X-bar and S, X-bar and R, Median (R)-R,
Z-bar and S, Pareto charts and frequency histograms among others. The SPC software also
was capable of performing many SPC-related analyses such as scatter diagrams or Box and
Whisker charts. More importantly, it was capable to instantly evaluate control charts based
on the real-time data and provide quality management personnel with the real-time Corporate
clear stop/go instructions. In addition, the built-in FMEA tool in the ERP quality survival in
management module enabled KKCO to more effectively perform the FMEA technique on its Industry 4.0
manufacturing processes to reduce defects and peruse continuous improvement. The ERP
could automatically create FMEA forms for different parts/products, calculate the RPN and era
attach any document related to causes of failure or the actions necessary to address existing
issues. The ERP quality management module also enabled quality control personnel to 17
schedule actions based on the RPN and make sure that no necessary actions are delayed.
The use of IT in the support of different quality assurance and control techniques in KKCO
since 2013 significantly lowered the defect rates. Table II explains that, as compared to the
working years 2010–2012, the defect rates since 2013 have shown meaningful decrease.
However, some of defect rates in 2013 were higher than 6.7 percent (3 sigma). By the end of
2015, the defect rates for all machines continued to decrease in a way they were below
6.7 percent. Figure 5 compares the average defect rates for years 2010–2012 with the
average defect rates for years 2013–2017 to visualize the effectiveness of lean-digitized

Defect rate
Machine name 2013 (%) 2014 (%) 2015 (%) 2016 (%) 2017 (%)

P5 7.65 6.14 5.98 5.91 5.12

P6 7.26 6.55 6.16 5.83 5.81
P10 7.87 6.27 6.21 6.20 5.39
P12 8.19 6.69 6.31 6.05 5.82
P16 7.88 5.82 5.76 5.13 5.12
TR5 6.48 5.54 5.51 4.98 4.69
TR6 6.23 5.24 5.14 4.88 4.55 Table II.
TR10 7.30 6.57 6.14 6.06 6.02 The defect rate in
TR12 8.05 6.64 5.97 5.18 4.93 KKCO for the working
TR16 6.88 6.28 5.96 5.80 5.47 years 2013–2017

TR16 6.08%
7.33%
TR12 6.15%
8.21%
TR10 6.42%
8.13%
TR6 5.21%
6.33%
TR5 5.44%
6.51%
P16 5.94%
10.34%
P12 6.61%
9.89%
P10 6.39%
10.11%
P6 6.32%
8.59% Figure 5.
P5 6.16% Average defect rates
9.47%
before and after
0.00% 2.00% 4.00% 6.00% 8.00% 10.00% 12.00% implementation of
lean-digitizing
Average defect rate 2013–2017 Average defect rate 2010–2012 manufacturing system
JMTM manufacturing system in KKCO. This figure clearly shows that manufacturing digitization
31,1 in support of quality management operations has resulted in a significant decrease in defect
rates of production machinery. It should however be mentioned that the decrease in defect
rates can also be attributed to the lean-digitized manufacturing system leading to improved
maintenance management since 2013.
Maintenance management. The CMMS module embedded in the ERP solution
18 considerably assisted KKCO to performed preventive maintenance. This CMMS assisted
KKCO to better plan and schedule preventative maintenance operations, manage maintenance
orders more effectively, easily manage spare-part inventory and better track them, reduce any
paperwork related to maintenance activities and keep a better track of machine breakdowns
history and pattern. The sheer commitment of KKCO management to use the CMMS for
preventive maintenance resulted in improving maintenance productivity, particularly in the
working years 2014 and 2015. This CMMS was able to create a traceable breakdown pattern in
machines (e.g. at what operator’s shift breakdowns are more frequent), and offered features
such as maintenance alerting system, downtime tracking, automatically calculating OEE and
the graphical maintenance calendar. More importantly, the application of industrial sensors to
monitor machinery in real-time enabled the company to initiate transforming its maintenance
model from preventing maintenance to predictive maintenance wherever applicable.
Figures 6–8 compare the average mean time between failure (MTBF), maintenance
breakdown severity (MBS) and mean time to repair (MTTR) for years 2011–2012 with the
average values of MTBF, MBS and MTTR for years 2013–2017, respectively, to depict the
usefulness of lean-digitized manufacturing system in KKCO in terms of equipment productivity
improvement. Figure 6 shows that MTBF for all machines excluding machine TR6 increased
considerably after “Manufacturing Digitization Project.” Consistently, Figures 7 and 8,
respectively, show that MBS and MTTR for all machines decreased considerably due to the
project. These figures, collectively, demonstrate the equipment productivity improvement after
implementation of lean-digitized manufacturing system.

TR16 87.80
79.00

TR12 93.20
80.00

TR10 90.60
67.00

TR6 61.60
58.33

TR5 87.80
77.00

P16 122.60
104.33
81.20
P12
70.00
73.40
P10
60.00
69.40
P6
52.00
Figure 6. 72.20
P5
Average MTBF (in 52.67
hour) before and after 0.00 20.00 40.00 60.00 80.00 100.00 120.00 140.00
“Manufacturing
Digitization Project” MTBF 2013–2017 MTBF 2010–2012
 Corporate
TR16 490.35
555.89 survival in
TR12 379.22 Industry 4.0
429.04
229.58
era
TR10
294.36
218.95
TR6
243.86 19
TR5 173.88
196.67

P16 512.62
539.66

P12 502.41
557.37

P10 387.63
470.90

P6 320.45
361.00

P5 290.18 Figure 7.
316.07 Average MBS (in
0.00 100.00 200.00 300.00 400.00 500.00 600.00 USD) before and after
“Manufacturing
MBS 2013–2017 MBS 2010–2012 Digitization Project”

TR16 6.63
7.97

TR12 5.70
6.31

TR10 4.77
5.36

TR6 3.04
3.45

TR5 2.83
3.03

P16 6.75
7.73

P12 5.86
6.50

P10 4.19
4.92

P6 3.63
3.78

P5 3.91 Figure 8.
4.22
Average MTTR (in
0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 hour) before and after
“Manufacturing
MTTR 2013–2017 MTTR 2010–2012 Digitization Project”

Human resource management. The newly implemented ERP solution and IT resources
advanced the development of HRM practices in KKCO in the several ways. HRM module
enabled top management to monitor the performance of each shop-floor employee and establish
an employee recognition and reward program. For example, data mining in the areas of
production and maintenance management enabled top management to monitor defect rates of
each machine, or machine breakdowns for a particular operator when responsible. In addition,
JMTM the HRM module features such as internal e-communication system, virtual brainstorming,
31,1 team building and cooperation tools significantly supported information sharing and teamwork
in KKCO. Thanks to these features, employees in KKCO easily shared different type of
information and held virtual meetings. Since majority of employees participated in the ERP
deployment project and their expectations were considered while developing and implementing
ERP modules, they felt more involved in key operations in KKCO. More importantly, and via
20 the newly implemented IT tools, the shop-floor employees were empowered to use computers
and personal smart devices to report production stats, breakdown and repair and maintenance
information, and participate in the real-time SPC program.
Supplier and customer integration. The manufacturing digitization program and the
development of lean-digitized manufacturing system revolutionized the supplier and customer
relationship management in KKCO. Because of the organization-wide access to the high-speed
internet and thanks to the use of e-mail, virtual communication and electronic-banking for the
first time, KKCO entered to the world of business-to-business electronic commerce. With the
use of internet and CAD, KKCO started to directly send spare-part and die designs to its
foreign suppliers electronically, and establish virtual meetings with them to better track their
orders. These procedures reduced the time of receiving raw materials and spare-parts/dies
from international suppliers significantly. Likewise, KKCO started to accept new
manufacturing orders and related designs from its customer electronically. Because of
better information sharing with customers and suppliers, KKCO was enabled to more
effectively develop its manufacturing plans and strategies. Before the implementation of cloud
ERP solution and electronic archiving system in KKCO, information about each supplier or
customer were scattered across different departments, some stored across multiple computers
and some kept as printed documents. By removing information silos, the ERP system enabled
management and employees to immediately access to any data (e.g. order, financial records,
designs, etc.) for a particular supplier or customer whenever and wherever needed. The newly
implemented IT tools enhanced the effectiveness of supplier and customer relationship
management in KKCO and resulted in higher production and delivery schedule accuracy, and
timeliness of supplier deliveries, simplified purchasing process and reduced inventory holding.

5.3 The functionality of IT-enabled lean-digitized manufacturing

KKCO developed three core competencies of sensing, seizing and, transforming to gain value
from the lean-digitized manufacturing capability. By developing the sensing competency,
KKCO managed to better align its digital strategy. Thanks to the sensing competency, KKCO
effectively identified and understood the changes required by lean-digitized manufacturing
system and provided a detailed plan explaining how these changes can be applied as part of
the company’s strategic goals. In doing so, KKCO first scanned the business opportunities that
can be offered by lean-digitized manufacturing capability and processed the information
gathered. By the continual monitoring of lean-digitized manufacturing performance, KKCO
evaluated other potential opportunities obtainable, and recognized specific areas for further
actions. By developing the second core competency, seizing, KKCO mobilized its resources to
follow up on the opportunities it had identified by the sensing competency. In doing so,
KKCO moved beyond just identifying the new business opportunities in the Industry 4.0 era.
KKCO in effect made practical decisions to apply the required changes across the organization
to capture the opportunities identified. Therefore, sensing competency enabled KKCO to first
plan and design the organizational actions required by manufacturing digitization
transformation, select the best organizational actions among the pool of options available
(e.g. technologies, service providers, processes, etc.), and implement the decisions and actions
most practical to the organization. Finally, yet importantly, transforming competency
enabled KKCO to reconfigure its existing resources (e.g. existing IT infrastructure and
knowledge resource) to align them with core principle of lean-digitized manufacturing system. Corporate
In addition, this competency allowed KKCO to build new resources (e.g. IT governance) or survival in
complement existing resources and capabilities (IT infrastructure, lean processes and Industry 4.0
strategic management practices) to address any shortcoming in the organizational resource
base in support of lean-digitized manufacturing capability. era

5.4 The business value of lean-digitized manufacturing system 21

It is well documented that both IT and LM entail many expenses and benefits. KKCO invested
heavily in IT to effectively develop and implement the lean-digitized manufacturing system.
According to the report from accounting department, in 2013 KKCO invested up to 68 percent
of its 2012 revenue in technological and human IT resources. This initial investment was rather
high due to complete renewal of IT infrastructure and implementation of the ERP solution. In
2014 and 2015, however, KKCO invested around 38.2 and 41.5 percent of its yearly revenue,
respectively, in human and technological IT resources (e.g. IT training, IT experts, system
maintenance, licensing fees, industrial sensor upgrades, etc.) to ensure the success of lean-
digitized manufacturing system. Although KKCO endured many direct and hidden costs due to
this project, however, statistical facts show that this project paid for itself just by the end of
working year 2017, as stated by the CEO of KKCO. The implementation of lean-digitized
manufacturing system resulted in a significant decrease in the defect rates, number of machine
breakdowns and maintenance costs. Many other indirect benefits were offered to KKCO as a
result of implementing this project, including improved product quality, less paper work, better
teamwork and communication across plant, significantly better order fulfillment, workflow
efficiency and reduced inventory expenses. Financially speaking, lean-digitized manufacturing
system in KKCO did not negatively impact financial performance. Figure 9 compares the return
on assets (ROA) and return on sales (ROS), return on invested capital and sale growth of KKCO
during the period of working years 2010–2017. This figure shows a strong trend in the
improvement of performance ratios in KKCO in the working years 2014–2017 and after the
one-year transitioning period for lean-digitized manufacturing system.
Experts believe that majority of financial measures including ROA and ROS are lagging
indicators, focused on the past, which may indicate the impact of other stimulants in
addition to the impact of digitization process. Therefore, we studied the business value of
lead-digitized manufacturing system based on its contribution to the improvement of

30.00%

25.00%

20.00%

15.00%

10.00%

5.00%

0.00%

–5.00%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
ROS 19.22% 17.65% 18.12% 18.20% 22.35% 21.93% 22.80% 24.13% Figure 9.
ROA 9.36% 8.86% 9.13% 11.07% 13.94% 14.11% 15.06% 16.11% Business performance
ROIC 10.23% 10.32% 9.85% 8.25% 11.32% 13.93% 12.78% 14.03% comparison for period
of 2010–2017
SG 3.83% –0.18% 4.11% –1.44% 4.53% 9.42% 10.33% 10.42%
JMTM financial performance, operational performance and strategic performance. For financial
31,1 performance, and after determining the total investment cost as well as the net value of
“Manufacturing Digitization Project,” the five year average for Return on Investment (ROI)
and annual ROI of the project for the five year period of 2013–2017 were, respectively,
calculated as 3.59 and 0.7 percent. This means the “Manufacturing Digitization Project”
broke even by the end of 2017 financially. To develop the link between manufacturing
22 digitization investments and operational performance indicators, the Balanced Scorecard
(BSC) concept was applied. Out of 23 initially identified operational performance indicators,
the six indicators of product quality, maintenance efficiency, product delivery timeliness,
inventory management accuracy, waste avoidance and production rate accuracy were
found to be significantly and positively affected by investment in the project. We further
assessed how “Manufacturing Digitization Project” investment was associated with
strategic success within KKCO. After identifying and ranking the critical strategic success
factors in KKCO, the application of BSC revealed that out of seven critical strategic success
factors crucial to KKCO, three strategic success factors of customer satisfaction, production
flexibility and productivity per employee have been significantly improved due to the
implementation of lean-digitized manufacturing system.

6. Discussion
Scholars nowadays believe that the inconsistency in justifying the direct relationship
between IT, digitization and business performance improvement is attributable to the
assumption of direct relationships between IT and business performance (Ghobakhloo and
Azar, 2018b). IEOC perspective explains that although the direct relationship between IT
and firm-level performance might be weak, however, IT resources leveraged effectively can
augment critical organizational capabilities, which can result in improved business
performance (Liang et al., 2010). The productivity impacts of IT-enabled lean-digitized
manufacturing capability, as demonstrated in this case study, provided strong support for
this perspective. This case study showed that although LM practices, on a conceptual level,
can be carried out without the help of IT, however, IT investments and manufacturing
digitization are crucial to higher levels of LM implementation and its continuous
improvement. KKCO performance improvement was mainly due to the informed and
planned alignment of the company’s IT investment strategy with core LM practices already
in place and not merely because of purchasing modern computer hardware and software.
The case study showed that Industry 4.0 transition process could begin with digitizing
certain areas of operations, as KKCO first digitized its production, maintenance and
quality management operations and practices in support of LM as its core business
strategy. As explained previously, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a network
of typical manufactures to simultaneously achieve integration and data transparency
across the entire value chain, complete removal of functional silos and manufacturing
automation. Therefore, Industry 4.0 transition for typical manufacturers should be
commensurate with their organizational, operational, technical and legal readiness for this
phenomenon. KKCO case demonstrated that the digitization of certain operations and
processes, when aligned with the firm’s core strategies, capabilities and procedures, can
offer superior competitiveness even in Industry 4.0 era. This finding supports previous
works of Coreynen et al. (2017) and Rachinger et al. (2018) showing that companies can
leverage digital resources to increase their competitiveness in the age of the fourth
industrial revolution.

6.1 Lessons learned

LM has always been the core manufacturing strategy in KKCO. The evolution of LM system
in the company can be assessed within three distinctive periods as presented in Figure 10.
 Corporate
system drawbacks
Manufacturing

• ERP Failure after initial implementation • Direct and indirect digitization costs
• Human errors in LM practices
• Delayed reports • Failed IT investment • Temporary manufacturing interruption
• Organization-wide resistance to change
survival in
• Slow process improvement
• Data management issues
• CMMS failure • Defect rate fluctuation
• Continuous improvement interruption
• IT–OT integration issues
• Cyber-security risks and threats
Industry 4.0
• Information silo
• IT reliability issues and data losses • Lean-digitized system debugging era
evolution paradigm

2005–2008 2009–2012 2013–2017

23
Manufacturing

Semi-manual LM system IT-based LM system Lean-digitized manufacturing

in KKCO

Modern IT Industrial
Internet Email In-house ERP Could ERP
hardware sensors
Accounting Cabled computer Organization- IT-based CAD/
Server wide IT training quality tools CAM
management software networks
In-house Inventory External Employee training for Wireless Intelligent camera
CMMS management software IT support ERP modules technologies technology
Manufacturing

Figure 10.
advantages

• Increased profitability, agility, and

• Increased manufacturing efficiency • Simplified information sharing
system

predictability
• Overall reduction of waste • Migration from breakdown • Continuous improvement across Lean manufacturing
maintenance to preventive
• Improved product quality
maintenance
processes and operations
• Results-focused efficiency and
system evolution
• Safer work environment • Lower information lead time competitive quality in KKCO

KKCO benefited from a variety of IT applications to support different LM practices during

the working years 2005–2008. Yet, majority of LM-related tasks were conducted manually.
The internally developed CMMS failed within this period, which severely interrupted the
preventive maintenance system in the company. To digitally support LM and address the
issues of information silo and human errors, KKCO attempted to deploy the IT-based LM
system via the development and implementation of an in-house ERP. This manufacturer
was rather unsuccessful to deploy the IT-based LM system, and failed to fully achieve the
core principle of LM that is continuous improvement. Learning from its mistakes, KKCO
tackled many causes of failure via “Manufacturing Digitization Project,” and eventually
achieved considerable performance improvement. Evidence from this case company shows
that IT is indeed embedded within every single practice and sub-practice of LM. Thus, top
management is required to be supportive regarding the use of IT for LM in their businesses.
This means that they should be willing and committed to providing necessary resources
and authority/power for effective implementation and use of modern IT tools required for
supporting different LM practices. Their support motivates greater user participation, and
leads to a greater success, in terms of user satisfaction and system use. Similar to KKCO,
majority of manufacturers in developed and developing countries are small in size. In such
circumstances, owner/managers are the key decision makers in their businesses and
responsible for the most key business activities such as decision making related to future
plans. Thus, they have the power to facilitate manufacturing digitization in support of LM.
As we observed in the KKCO case, management should be supportive by providing training
campaigns, allocation of adequate resources such as financial resources, and encouraging
employees to use IT in their daily activities. This case study also showed that users’ IT
knowledge and expertise is a significant facilitator of manufacturing digitization.
Manufacturers, particularly smaller ones, have to ponder that higher organization-wide
IT knowledge and expertise can facilitate the implementation of more effective AMT
through decreasing the degree of uncertainty related to more advanced IT tools and higher
user participation in development of these technologies. The organization-wide
improvement of IT knowledge and expertise can be done through providing in-house
computer and IT training via the assistance of external IT experts. Overall, the fourth
industrial revolution is characterized by the elimination of lower skilled jobs through
automation, and manufacturers transitioning into Industry 4.0 should develop their
employees to handle less routing, complex, and digitized daily tasks, via continuous
knowledge and skills development.
JMTM The case study also showed that although IT resource can heavily support internal
31,1 processes regarding JIT, SRM and CRM; however, the desired improvement of these LM
practices requires deep integration with suppliers and customers. Supplier and customer
integrations within Industry 4.0 setting requires a hub firm to integrate the flow of
information, materials and finances with its customers and suppliers. To achieve this
amount of integration, all members of a supply network need to use IT-based technologies
24 that enable them to collaborate electronically. Therefore, a hub firm and its customers and
suppliers need to benefit from common IT technologies to enable virtual teams to engage in
collaborative tasks. A higher level of integration among a hub firm and its supplier and
customers requires supply chain-wide IT infrastructure integration. In the case study, it was
observed that although KKCO invested in IT to support JIT, SRM and CRM, many of its
customers and suppliers were not ready and willing enough to do business electronically
and make electronic collaboration. Thus, LM effectiveness, to some extent, requires all
business partners to jointly use integrated IT to perform value chain activities and achieve
supply chain-wide integration. Considering Toyota production system as an example,
upstream tier one and tier two auto part suppliers have been requested to IIoT-enable their
production equipment in order to track and communicate their production machines
operational status to the Toyota’s Odoo system.

6.2 Contributions to the theory and research

The theoretical contribution of this study is twofold. Viewed from IECP, IT economics
background nowadays proposes that the strategic value of IT resources and process
digitization should be considered in the light of the complementary role that information
and digital technology resources play while enhancing the value of other organizational
resources, processes and capabilities. Although KKCO possessed a wide range of simple to
advance IT resources before the “Manufacturing Digitization Project”; however,
management was never satisfied with the performance impact of IT spending. By
developing the ability to purposefully leverage different IT resources in support of
manufacturing digitization within LM environment, KKCO managed to effectively link its
IT spending strategy to the achievement of strategic organizational goals. Providing an
answer to the IT productivity paradox, our case study supported IECP by showing that IT
can enable manufacturers to generate business value through the dynamic capability of
lean-digitized manufacturing. In addition, the study introduced the concept of lean-digitized
manufacturing and showed this hybrid manufacturing system can be regarded as a
successful survival business strategy in the Industry 4.0 era.

6.3 Managerial contribution

KKCO case showed that while being beneficial, both IT and LM are considerably costly.
Because of the implementation of lean-digitized manufacturing system, the production
ceased temporarily in early 2013 in order for the workforce to better embrace the newly
implemented ERP and LM practices. Costs of dismantling some of previous physical plant
setups and systems, and costs of continually training employees are other examples of
digitization and LM costs for KKCO. More importantly, LM practices were observed to
continually evolving over the period of time, which means the infrastructure and human
resource expertise required by LM should evolve continuously. Therefore, moving toward
LM effectiveness for KKCO has needed and will always need a never-ending managerial
support. Thus, manufacturers need to recall that financial investment in implementing and
improving LM directly determines its effectiveness. Alternatively, lean-digitized
manufacturing system would increase the employees’ morale and productivity, customer
satisfaction due to reduced defects, faster time to market and improved delivery timeliness.
Integrative IT and AMTs also help with eliminating many of the human handoffs and
interventions that slow manufacturing and delivery processes across the supply network. Corporate
We observed many potential direct costs and indirect benefits are associated with the survival in
implementation of lean-digitized manufacturing system, therefore, organizations may not be Industry 4.0
able to clearly identify the effect of IT and LM investments on financial performance
improvement. Thus, the manager should not limit the value of lean-digitized manufacturing era
system to net financial measures. We recommend manufacturers to also incorporate non-
financial metrics since the results of the present case study demonstrated that waste 25
avoidance, market sensing, customer satisfaction, employee productivity and production
flexibility, among many other non-financial advantages, transform the value of
manufacturing digitization and LM practices into financial performance.

6.4 Social contribution

Our observation revealed that manufacturing digitization generated a change in the
distribution of manufacturing jobs within KKCO. Progression of lean-digitized
manufacturing system was associated with reduction in the number of routine and
physically demanding jobs. The application of machine vision for example resulted in the
job losses in the area of manual inspections and measurements. This resulted in KKCO
terminating relationships with a few underperforming employees who refused to upskill for
more skill-intensive jobs within the company, which in turn caused wrongful termination
lawsuit. The digitization process however created more jobs than it eliminated within
KKCO, mostly in the areas of mechatronics, IT support and industrial engineering. Overall,
manufacturing digitization in KKCO was associated with employee productivity, waste
reduction and improved business relationships.
Manufacturing digitization, as observed in this case study, may have deep social
implications given it might be associated with unemployment among low-skilled workforce,
disparity of power in business relationships, cybersecurity concerns and intellectual
property issues. We believe manufacturing firms that aim for digitization should be
prepared to take responsibility for their digitalization process and steer it in a direction that
simultaneously safeguards economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Notes
1. Trademark, full name, and detailed specification of the company cannot be disclosed due to the
business information confidentiality laws in place.
2. Trademark, full name and detailed specification of the consultancy company cannot be disclosed
due to the business information confidentiality laws in place.

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JMTM Further reading
31,1 Moktadir, M.A., Ali, S.M., Kusi-Sarpong, S. and Shaikh, M.A.A. (2018), “Assessing challenges for
implementing Industry 4.0: implications for process safety and environmental protection”,
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Springer, Heidelberg.
30 About the authors
Morteza Ghobakhloo is Assistant Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering, Minab Higher
Education Center, University of Hormozgan. His research interests include new technology adoption
and acceptance in Industry 4.0 era, business value of digitization, business value of hybrid
manufacturing system and corporate sustainability. His research has been published in many leading
information system and operations management journals such as the IJPR, IJAMT, IMDS, IJITDM,
JMTM, ITD, JSBED, JM2, IRMJ, JOEUC and JOCEC. Morteza Ghobakhloo is the corresponding author
and can be contacted at: morteza_ghobakhloo@yahoo.com
Masood Fathi is Assistant Professor in Production Engineering at the School of Engineering
Science, University of Skövde, Sweden. He received the PhD Degree in Industrial Engineering and
specializes in optimization solutions for production logistic systems. His main research fields are
operations research, operations management, production planning, heuristic and metaheuristic
algorithms, and logistics and supply chain optimization. He is the author of several research papers
published in reputed international journals such as the IJAMT, IJRP and EJIE among many others.

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