The mitigation effect of Industry 4.0 technologies on Lean implementation barriers in Engineer-to-Order companies: A Multiple Case Study

Companies with an engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing strategy develop and produce customised products typically in high-mix low volumes and non-repetitive production settings. Lean methods are often difficult to apply in non-repetitive environments and the literature reports on Lean implementation barriers in the ETO context. Although, new emerging technologies from Industry 4.0 (I4.0) have the potential to mitigate these barriers, this has not yet been empirically validated in the ETO industry. In this article, we propose a framework that shows the mitigation effect of some of the I4.0 technologies and concepts on barriers to Lean implementation in the ETO context using an interview protocol followed by semi-structured interviews with 17 companies from the construction, customised machinery, and shipbuilding sectors located in Northern, Central and Southern Europe. Future research should further validate the findings using specific case studies in the ETO industry to highlight the necessity to apply both Lean and Industry 4.0.