Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management

Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

Toward the integration of Lean Six Sigma and Industry 4.0:

Current trends and future perspectives-Descriptive
Bibliometric Analysis

Dounia Skalli , Abdelkabir Charkaoui

Laboratory of Engineering, Industrial Management and Innovation, Faculty of Sciences and

Technology, Hassan 1st University, PO Box 577, Settat, Morocco,
[Link]@[Link] , [Link]@[Link]

Anass Cherrafi
Laboratory of Mathematical Modeling, Simulation and Smart Systems (L2M3S), ENSAM
Meknes, Moulay Ismail University
[Link]@[Link]

Abstract

This paper aims to identify and analyze the existing literature regarding the combination of Lean six sigma 'LSS' and
Industry 4.0 ‘I4.0’. Based on a descriptive bibliometric analysis, the literature on the Scopus database was scanned
from 2011 to September 2021. The authors identified and analyzed the most relevant articles to explore trends in the
research field and to identify potential gaps, concerns, and perspectives for future research. The fourth industrial
revolution, known as Industry 4.0, represents a new phase for manufacturing industries. The technological advances
offered by industry 4.0 provide a real-time data connection, which leads to greater availability and accessibility of
data. LSS is one of the most widely used operation management concept for optimizing production processes in
manufacturing. The connection between the two concepts LSS and I4.0 marks the beginning of a new era for digital
Lean Six Sigma and process optimization. The analysis shows that few research studies have been conducted on
LSS and I4.0 integration; no studies have examined readiness assessments and framework for the integration of LSS
and I4.0. The result confirms that I4 is growing fast as a research field, which covers a variety of disciplines and
research areas. The study is useful for both academics and professionals because it outlines the major lines of
research in the field.

Keywords
Industry 4.0, Lean manufacturing, Lean Six Sigma, Literature review.

1. Introduction
Since the industrial revolution, manufacturing organizations have been developing better business models and
strategies to enhance what it has traditionally been considered their primary objectives of increasing economic profit
and resources throughput(Garza-Reyes et al. 2019). Thus, the avenue of Industry 4.0 advanced technologies has
changed the operations management in manufacturing industries around the world. Industry 4.0 technologies have
generated a major impact on manufacturing and subsequently increased competitive pressure. For this reason,
continuous improvement methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma have become useful and must
be improved by following the new I4 technologies.

Over the past five years, Industry 4.0 has been classified in several studies as a successful new strategic paradigm
for improving metrics such as cost, productivity, quality, customer satisfaction, energy and lead time (Buer et
al.2021; Chiarini and Kumar 2020; Deuse et al. 2020; Kolberg and Zuehlke 2015; Lu 2017; Luz Tortorella et
al.2021; Santos and Martins 2020).

IEOM Society International 410

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

Over the past three decades, Lean and Six Sigma have helped manufacturing industries to achieve operational
excellence, efficiency and improved customer satisfaction. LSS is a popular and widely applied methodology
adopted by many organizations for process improvement (Shah et al. 2008). Cherrafi et al. (2017) defines Lean Six
Sigma as an integrated strategy, which reflects a combination and synergy between two powerful continuous
improvement approaches, viz. Lean and Six Sigma In recent years the Lean and Six Sigma methodologies are
applied and studied as one (Shah et al. 2008).Several authors classified LSS as one of the best models leading to the
Operational Excellence (Chiarini 2011; Salah et al. 2010; Jaeger et al. 2014). Contrary to lean production, digital
technologies and their growing role within operations practices are a nascent phenomenon (Schniederjans et al.
2020).

The main goal of both LSS and I4.0 is to improve the compitiveness of the manufacturing but in different ways and
using different tools and principals. The potential integration of Lean Six Sigma and Industry 4.0 has received much
attention for both academics and practitioners over the past few years. Few authors(Anass et al. 2021; Cifone et al.
2021; Deuse et al. 2020; Ejsmont et al. 2020; Ejsmont and Gładysz 2020; Gallo et al. 2021; Tortorella et al. 2020,
n.d.; Yadav et al. 2021) have contributed to the research and development of this [Link] motivation for
addressing this topic is that relatively little research has been conducted around the relationship between LSS and
Industry 4.0.

The purpose of this article is to review what has already been discussed in the literature on the concept of "Lean Six
Sigma Industry 4.0". To address the objective of this research, we conducted a literature review of LSS and I4
paradigms published over the past ten years (2011-2021).The research objectives are classified as follows (1) to
present the state of the art in the field of I4 and LSS and (2) to indicate the future research directions in this field.
A number of studies indicate that research investigating the impact of I4.0 technologies on LSS implementation is
currently limited, and empirical evidence on the combination between them is still scarce (e.g., Tortorella and
Fettermann, 2018; Ciano et al. 2021; Pagliosa et al. 2021). Considering this gap, the following research question
arises: What are the present trends in the association of lean six sigma and industry 4.0 paradigms?

To address this question, we performed a bibliometric analysis. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2
establishes the background on the main concepts related to our study, i.e. the Industry 4.0 and Lean Six Sigma as
well as the relationship between the two concepts. Section 3 describes the proposed research method and results are
shown in Section 4. Then, we present our analysis and discussion in Section 5. The paper ends with the conclusions
which highlight the implications of the study, limitations and future research directions.

2. Theoretical background
In this section, we briefly review the established concepts and practices of Lean Six Sigma, and Industry 4.0. Then,
we summarize the relationship between these two concepts according to the literature.

2.1 Lean Six Sigma

The concept of LSS was used for the first time by (George 2002) in the book "Lean Six Sigma: Combining Six
Sigma with Lean Speed». It’s an initiative to integrate the “Lean” manufacturing approach, whose origin refers to
the Toyota Production System (TPS) and was later adopted by North American companies (Womack et al. 1990),
with the “Six Sigma” methodology, which included several quality management techniques.

The Lean Six Sigma (LSS) approach can be defined as a strategy or methodology capable increasing the
performance of a process, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and financial results for an organization (Snee
2010).When the VSM identifies a quality issue in a process step, Six Sigma provides a methodology for data driven
analysis to define and quantify the types of errors. Statistical analysis is used to identify root causes and implement
process improvements that reduce the errors.(Sodhi 2020).

Lean Six Sigma has been widely applied with great success in manufacturing industries to improve operational
performance. Its application was focused in manufacturing environments for many years. However, LSS is being
increasingly discussed and implemented in different sectors like healthcare (Chiarini and Cherrafi n.d , Laureani et
al.2013), construction (Van den Bos et al. 2014) and, education (Thomas et al. 2015b). Furthermore, Lean Six
Sigma was also discussed and combined with many concepts such as sustainability, green, and even agility and

IEOM Society International 411

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

resilience. (Belhadi et al.2020; Cherrafi et al.2016; Duarte et al.2020; Leong et al. 2020; Titmarsh et al.2020;
Touriki et al.2021).

2.2 Industry 4.0 : Definition, Technologies

Industry 4.0 was recognized as the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)’ by the World Economic Forum (Schwab
2016). Industry 4.0 is a continuation of the previous industrial revolutions as shown in Fig2 An Industrial
Revolution may be defined as a turning point in which there was a significant transition to new manufacturing
processes supported by advances in science and technology, shifting their methods, organization and resources
(Belvedere et al.2013).Industry 1.0 refers to the mechanization of manufacturing systems using water and stream
power. The First Industrial revolution is defined as one of the most important advancements in humanity, starting in
1760 (Liao et al. 2018), then came Industry 2.0. The second industrial revolution began in late 19th century and was
characterized by mass production through the utilization of electric energy (Rojko 2017). While the introduction of
automation and information technology has launched Industry 3.0. The Third Industrial Revolution [Link] the late
1960s and was characterized by the automation of production processes and utilization of computers to support
manufacturing management (Yin et al.2018).

Industry 4.0 is one of the most discussed topics by experts and academics in recent years; however no definition of
the term I4.0 has been clearly stated. It is recognized as the convergence of several different technologies (Raj et
al.2020). In view of its novelty, there is neither a world-wide accepted definition of it nor a proper classification of
technologies under its umbrella (Culot et al.2020).

From a business perspective, [Link] been claimed as an approach for significantly improving performance through
automation and digitalization(Luz Tortorella et al. 2021). This performance improvement is enabled by higher levels
of interconnectivity among people, products, processes, services and equipment, big data analytics, as well as both
horizontal and vertical integration of value chains (Ghobakhloo 2018; Fatorachian and Kazemi 2018).

The concept of Industry 4.0 is gaining interest among researchers, focusing on the increase in operational
capabilities (Bai et al. 2020). The goal of the initiative is transformation of industrial manufacturing through
digitalization and exploitation of potentials of new technologies (Sodhi 2020).

3. Research method
The present review aims to assess the ongoing research on the integration of LSS and I4.0 and analyze the most
relevant papers to establish potential gaps, concerns, and prospects for future research using descriptive bibliometric
[Link] most appropriate research method to explore a field regarding scientific production and impact is the
bibliometric analysis.

Bibliometric analysis promises a systematic, transparent and reproducible review process and therefore helps
improve the quality of reviews by following five steps ( Zupic and Cater 2015). The figure 1 illustrates the
bibliometric method workflow inspired from (Santos and Martins 2020: Zupic and Cater 2015).

Figure 1. Research method

IEOM Society International 412

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

(1) To define the research key words, the authors conducted a brainstorming workshop. The keywords used in
the search query was carried out as follows: various terms, synonyms and abbreviations related to the
words “Lean”, "six sigma", "lean six sigma" and ‘Industry 4.0ʹ have been identified in the literatureThe
search query used to extract papers from the Scopus database was as follows: ("lean" or "lean
manufacturing" or "LM" or " lean six sigma" or "LSS" or "DMAIC" or "continious improvement") AND
("I4.0" or "Industrie 4.0" or "Industry 4.0" or "digital transformation" or "digital factory" or "digital
manufacturing" or "fourth industrial revolution" or "smart factory" or "smart manufacturing" or "Internet
of Things"). The authors search this combination in the title, keywords and abstract. The period of the
researched articles is 2011 up to September 2021. The reasons for this time period are explained by the fact
that the term "Industry 4.0ʹ was first used in 2011 at the Hanover fair. We conducted the search according
to the inclusion/exclusion criterion showed in Table 1.

(2) The second step was to read the summary of each of the documents found in databases and decides if they
fit the research topic. The selected articles were deeply analyzed to ensure that their content was relevant to
our study. The result of this process was that 60 articles were finally selected to be analyzed.

(3) For the analysis, we use the software applications, i.e. VOSviewer (https:// [Link]).

(4) We describe and interpete the findings.

Table 1. Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion criteria Document type: Journal article, conference article or book chapter
English language
Exclusion criteria Non-English language publication
Text–books, unpublished working papers, and conference presentations
Not peer-reviewed academic literature
Not related to Industry 4.0 and lean or six sigma or lean six sigma
No full text

4. Results and Analysis

4.1 Annual scientific production
Figure 2 1illustrates the number of publications per year. Referring to this graph we note that the first article was
published in 2013 and few papers were published until 2017. The majority of relevant publications in the research
area started in 2018. This could be explained by the fact that I4.0 is a relatively new topic. The annual scientific
production has been rapidly increasing since 2018.

Further, 70% of the papers were published over the last three years, with a peak of 22 papers in 2020.
Thorough a depth analysis of the statistics related to the number of publications in 2020 which is graphically
highest, we notice that only 35% of the publications are related to the main keywords "lean" "six sigma" and
"industry 4.0" while the majority of the publications are related to the integration of lean and industry 4.

Figure 2. Publication year

IEOM Society International 413

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

4.2 Geography distribution

Figure 3 presents a country wise analysis of the top countries interested in our research area and Figure 4 shows
percentage of publications per Continent. The 60 articles reviewed come from all over the world, 12 different
countries were involved, with 84% of the research performed in developed countries (i.e. Europe and North
America) and 15% in developing countries (i.e. Asia, Africa and South America).

According to the affiliation of the authors. Figure 3 shows that Brazil is the country with the highest incidence of
Publications (22%), followed by Germany (18%) and Italy (16%). We noted that the author with the most
publications in the fiels “Guilherme Tortorella “is Brazilian.

Figure 3 Geographical distribution as per first author affiliation Figure 4. Geographical-based classification.

4.3 Top field journals

The most relevant journals publishing studies on LSS and I4 belong to three disciplines which are respectively
Engineering, followed by Business, Management and Accounting and the third represented by Computer Science.
Regarding Figure 5, 50% of the research articles were published in four journals: International Journal of Production
Research (IJPR), Procedia Manufacturing, International Journal of Production Economics (IJPE) and Journal of
Manufacturing Technology Management. IJPR has the highest number of articles in 2019 and 2020.

Figure 5 Top field journals

IEOM Society International 414

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

4.4 Most relevant authors' production

Table 2 presents the most productive authors funded in the literature review which are Luz Tortorella with 15
papers, Pagliosa (5 papers) Angappa Gunasekaran (4 papers) Martin Molina (4 papers ) Joseph C. Chen (4 papers).

Table 2 Most relevant authors' production

Author First Last Number of
Publication Publication publcation
Year Year
Guilherme L. 2018 2021 11
Tortorella
Pagliosa 2018 2021 5
Kamble 2018 2021 4
Martin Molina 2018 2021 4
Joseph C. Chen 2014 2021 4
Belhadi amine 2019 2021 4
Angappa 2018 2021 4
Gunasekaran
Dombrowski 2017 2020 3

4.5 Most cited articles

According to the table 3, we summarize the most cited papers in litterature .As we see, (Thoben et al. 2017) came at
the first range with 759 cites, succeded by (Sanders et al. 2016) with 479 cites, (Kolberg and Zühlke 2015) with 408
cites, (Buer et al. 2018) with 387 cites. (Luz Tortorella and Fettermann 2018) was cited 364 times, (Wagner et al.
2017), with 298 cites; and (Mrugalska and Wyrwicka 2017) cited 237 times.

Table 3. Most cited articles

Reference Nbr Publication Source
citation year
Thoben et al. (2017) 759 2017 International journal of automation technology
Sanders et al. (2016) IFIP Advances in Information and
479 2016
Communication Technology
Kolberg and Zühlke IFAC-PapersOnLine
408 2015
(2015)
Buer et al. (2018) 387 2018 International Journal of Production Research
Luz Tortorella and International Journal of Production Research
364 2018
Fettermann (2018)
Wagner et al. (2017) 298 2017 Procedia CIRP
Mrugalska and Procedia Engineering
237 2017
Wyrwicka (2017)

4.6 Discussed keywords in the literature

4.6.1 Lean six sigma
The continuous improvement strategies reported by the studied articles among lean, six sigma or lean six sigma and
I4 are presented in the figure 6. As seen, the majority of the literature focuses on Lean rather than Six Sigma or Lean
Six Sigma when associated with I4 advanced technologies.

Lean six sigma combined with I4 has been of increasing interest to researchers since 2020. Value stream mapping
(VSM) is the lean tool with more practical applications. There have been significant efforts towards I4.0 in
companies from diverse sectors, such as manufacturing (Dalenogare et al. 2018), supply chain (Zekhnini et al. 2020;
Núñez-Merino et al. 2020), healthcare (Tortorella et al. 2019a), public services (Gerrikagoitia et al. 2019), among
others.

IEOM Society International 415

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

Figure 6. LSS most used keywords in the literature

4.6.2 Industry 4.0

Table 4 dresses the I4 technologies that were linked with different Lean and LSS principles and tools in the literature
review. Among the papers studied, the authors that reported I4 tools and LSS in their papers are referenced below
(Table 4).The results highlight that very few authors addressed all I4 tools in their studies; other researchers
presented a few tools, and the majority discussed the LSS concepts embedded in I4.0.

Table 4 shows the tools of Industry 4.0 that have been mentioned in literature review and the authors discussing I4
tools in their papers. Iot, Big Data, Cloud computing, CPS, Robotic, Technology and processare the most mentioned
tools by the authors.
Table 4. Most cited I4 Tools in litterature
References I4 Tools
(Pereira et al., 2019) Iot, Big Data
(Buer et al., 2018) Iot, Big Data, Cloud computing, CPS,
Robotic, Technology and process
(Sony, 2020) IoT, Cloud computing, CPS
(Tortorella and Fettermann, 2018) Iot, Big Data, Cloud computing, CPS,
(Pereira et al., 2019; Rossini et al., 2019; Robotic, Technology and process
Tortorella et al., 2020, 2019, 2021)
(Belhadi et al., 2021, 2020) Big data
(Kolberg et al., 2017) CPS
(Kolberg and Zuehlke, 2015) Robotic, Technology and process

4.7 Keywords occurrence

Referring to the visualization analysis in figure 7, we note that the keywords are classified into three clusters. It can
be seen that the term Industry 4.0 is in the middle of the scale (green) due to the repetition of this keyword across the
period analyzed. On the other hand,
• Red Cluster describes the operations management (quality management, lean six sigma) there are light
links between the words in this cluster and Industry4.0
• Green cluster describes the I4.0 technologies combined with lean in literature. The Main I4.0 technologies
associated with LSS as identified in the literature are: internet of things, big data, and machine learning.
There is a strong link between “Industry 4.0” and “lean”.
• And the blue Cluster consists of lean manufacturing and framework with a strong link with industry 4.0.

IEOM Society International 416

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

Figure 7. Keywords Occurrence

4.8 Distribution across the document type

One part of this descriptive review are the journals that have published the most research works related to LSS and
I4, which are presented in Figure 8. Out of 60 papers evaluated, journals papers have a predominant aspect when
looking at the types of the publications by 49%. While conference papers represent 45% Over the 29 conference
articles studied. Further, 34% of conference papers are published on the international conference of industrial
engineering and operational management IEOM. Figure 8T illustrate the breakdown of the bibliography based on
the publication types. Regarding journals, the IJPR played an important role in this field because it published 10.6%
of the papers considered for this review. It can be deduced that research on the integration of lean, Six Sigma and
industry 4.0 is likely to be published in a range of highly specialized journals.

Figure 8. Document type distribution

5. Research streams and Discussion

Our paper examines the state of the art, trends, and the perspectives of LSS and I4 integration in the context of
manufacturing. From the literature review, we conclude that the lean-SS-I4 topic has gained special interest and
popularity within the research community since 2018 as 80% of the publications are released in the period from
2018 to 2021. The findings indicate that the lean-SS-I4 is an emergent research field. The limited literature review
on LSS and I4 motivated our search.

The findings indicate that there is a rising interest in the field of integration LSS and I4 in manufacturing
environment. We note from the literature that research on LSS and l4 (LSS4.0) is conducted worldwide. Studies are
done in developing, emerging and developed countries. The highest number of research articles emerged from the
combination of Lean manufacturing and I4.

IEOM Society International 417

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

It was also observed that Big Data and IoT are the most used I4 technologies in the LSS and I4 integration
discussions; however, we found that technologies such as cloud computing, robotics, and AI do not receive enough
attention. However, the contribution of these technologies has to be investigated. The growing interest among
practitioners and academics in the integration of LSS and I4 has prompted the researchers to examine whether there
is a correlation between these two approaches.

Our literature review described the relationship and identified the three different possible combinations of Lean/LSS
and I4 in the context of manufacturing as follow: (1) Lean/LSS as a basis for industry 4.0, (2) Industry 4.0 and
lean/LSS interact with each other and (3) Industry 4.0 supports lean/LSS and increases efficiency.

(Arcidiacono and Pieroni 2018) states that “Industry 4.0 enables real-time planning of production plans, along with
dynamic self-optimization. The authors report that advanced analytics improve the performance of Lean Six Sigma
projects through faster data collection and analysis. Sodhi (2020) states that by implementing IoT techniques with
LSS methodology organization can better perform in effective decision making and providing products with better
quality. Future work can be done on integrating more techniques of Industry 4.0 to maximize benefits. Dogan and
Gurcan (2018) found that traditional data collection, monitoring and traditional analysis techniques, takes more time
and cost. But with the use of big data techniques, both cost and time could be saved in effective decision making.
Jayaram (2016) stated that Industry 4.0 and Lean Six Sigma are complement to each other, and proposed a model for
managing global supply chain management.

6. Conclusion
This research paper contributes to the literature review on the relationship between LSS and I4 technologies in a
manufacturing context. We conducted a bibliometric analysis of the literature review, the findings provided many
insights to the research. The main conclusion is that the research area is attracting growing interest from
researchers.

In conclusion and regarding the literature review The authors have identified many research gaps listed as follow:
(1) Lack of defined frameworks which describe a clear and suitable guidelines and roadmaps for the adoption
of Lean Six Sigma integrated with industry 4.0 technologies wich will help managers and practionners to
adopt and deploy the LSS4.0 even more, development frameworks would provide support in changing the
management practices within the lean six sigma.
(2) There are barriers that will play a critical and challenging role in the implementation of Lean Six Sigma
4.0. and in the other hand there are the "drivers keys" derived from existant literature that provide guidance
for LSS4.0 adoption for a successful integration of the two continuous improvement strategies lean and Six
sigma in the Industry 4.0 era. There are not enough studies on how to effectively treat these.
(3) Few studies discuss a clear Definition of the CSFs (critical success factors) that will help managers and
practionners in the implementation of Lean Six Sigma 4.0.

This study aimed at investigating the concept of LSS in the I4 which led to the formulation of future research
propositions. We suggest that future researchers further explore the correlations between LSS4.0 and other
management strategies such as Green, Resilience and Agility.

This paper presents some limitations that should be addressed. The using of specific keywords and databases, may
contribute to leaving out some high-quality articles. Moreover, the study findings reflect only the selected papers.

References
Anass, C., Amine, B., Ibtissam, E.H., Bouhaddou, I., Elfezazi, S., Industry 4.0 and Lean Six Sigma: Results from a
Pilot Study. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering 613–619, 2021;
Arcidiacono, G., Pieroni, A., The revolution Lean Six Sigma 4.0. International Journal on Advanced Science,
Engineering and Information Technology, vol. 8, pp. 141–149, 2018.
Belhadi, A., Kamble, S.S., Gunasekaran, A., Zkik, K., M., D.K., Touriki, F.E., A Big Data Analytics-driven Lean
Six Sigma framework for enhanced green performance: a case study of chemical company, Production
Planning & Control, pp. 1–24, 2021.

IEOM Society International 418

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

Belhadi, A., Kamble, S.S., Zkik, K., Cherrafi, A., Touriki, F.E., The integrated effect of Big Data Analytics, Lean
Six Sigma and Green Manufacturing on the environmental performance of manufacturing companies: The
case of North Africa, Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 252, pp. 119903, 2020.
Belvedere, V., Grando, A., Bielli, P., 2013. A quantitative investigation of the role of information and
communication technologies in the implementation of a product-service system. International Journal of
Production Research 51, 410–426., 2013
Buer, S.-V., Semini, M., Strandhagen, J.O., Sgarbossa, F., The complementary effect of lean manufacturing and
digitalisation on operational performance, International Journal of Production Research, vol. 59, pp. 1976–
1992, 2021.
Buer, S.-V., Strandhagen, J.O., Chan, F.T.S., The link between industry 4.0 and lean manufacturing: Mapping
current research and establishing a research agenda, International Journal of Production Research, vol. 56,
pp. 2924–2940, 2018.
Cherrafi, A., Elfezazi, S., Chiarini, A., Mokhlis, A., Benhida, K., Exploring Critical Success Factors for
Implementing Green Lean Six Sigma, in: Brennan, L., Vecchi, A. (Eds.), International Manufacturing
Strategy in a Time of Great Flux, Measuring Operations Performance. Springer International Publishing,
Cham, pp. 183–195, 2017.
Cherrafi, A., Elfezazi, S., Chiarini, A., Mokhlis, A., Benhida, K., The integration of lean manufacturing, Six Sigma
and sustainability: A literature review and future research directions for developing a specific model,
Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 139, pp. 828–846, 2016.
Chiarini, A., Japanese total quality control, TQM, Deming’s system of profound knowledge, BPR, Lean and Six
Sigma: Comparison and discussion. Lean Six Sigma Journal 2, 332–355, 2011.
Chiarini, A., Kumar, M., Lean Six Sigma and Industry 4.0 integration for Operational Excellence: evidence from
Italian manufacturing companies, Production Planning and Control, 2020.
Cifone, F.D., Hoberg, K., Holweg, M., Staudacher, A.P., ‘Lean 4.0’: How can digital technologies support lean
practices?, International Journal of Production Economics, vol. 241, pp. 108258, 2021.
Culot, G., Nassimbeni, G., Orzes, G., Sartor, M., Behind the definition of Industry 4.0: Analysis and open
questions. International Journal of Production Economics 226, 107617., 2020.
Deuse, J., Dombrowski, U., Nöhring, F., Mazarov, J., Dix, Y., Systematic combination of Lean Management with
digitalization to improve production systems on the example of Jidoka 4.0, International Journal of
Engineering Business Management, vol. 12, pp. 184797902095135, 2020.
Duarte, S., Cabrita, M. do R., Cruz-Machado, V., Business Model, Lean and Green Management and Industry 4.0:
A Conceptual Relationship, in: Xu, J., Ahmed, S.E., Cooke, F.L., Duca, G. (Eds.), Proceedings of the
Thirteenth International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management, Vol 1, pp.
359–372, 2020.
Ejsmont, K., Gładysz, B., Lean Industry 4.0—Wastes Versus Technology Framework, Lecture Notes in Mechanical
Engineering, pp. 537–546, 2020.
Ejsmont, K., Gladysz, B., Corti, D., Castaño, F., Mohammed, W.M., Martinez Lastra, J.L., Towards ‘Lean Industry
4.0ʹ–Current trends and future perspectives, Cogent Business and Management, vo. 7, 2020.
Fatorachian, H., Kazemi, H., A critical investigation of Industry 4.0 in manufacturing: theoretical operationalisation
framework. Production Planning & Control 29, 633–644, 2018.
Gallo, T., Cagnetti, C., Silvestri, C., Ruggieri, A., Industry 4.0 tools in lean production: A systematic literature
review, Presented at the Procedia Computer Science, pp. 394–403, 2021.
Garza-Reyes, J.A., Kumar, V., Batista, L., Cherrafi, A., Rocha-Lona, L., From linear to circular manufacturing
business models. JMTM 30, 554–560, 2019.
Ghobakhloo, M., 2018. The future of manufacturing industry: a strategic roadmap toward Industry 4.0. JMTM 29,
910–936, 2018.
Jaeger, A., Matyas, K., Sihn, W., Development of an Assessment Framework for Operations Excellence (OsE),
based on the Paradigm Change in Operational Excellence (OE). Procedia CIRP 17, 487–492, 2014.
Kolberg, D., Knobloch, J., Zühlke, D., Towards a lean automation interface for workstations, International Journal
of Production Research, 2017.
Kolberg, D., Zuehlke, D., Lean Automation enabled by Industry 4.0 Technologies, IFAC PAPERSONLINE, vol. 48,
pp. 1870–1875, 2015.
Kusiak, A., Smart manufacturing. International Journal of Production Research 56, 508–517.2018
Lasi, H., Fettke, P., Kemper, H.-G., Feld, T., Hoffmann, M., Industry 4.0. Bus Inf Syst Eng 6, 239–242, 2014.

IEOM Society International 419

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

Leong, W.D., Teng, S.Y., How, B.S., Ngan, S.L., Rahman, A.A., Tan, C.P., Ponnambalam, S.G., Lam, H.L.,
Enhancing the adaptability: Lean and green strategy towards the Industry Revolution 4.0, Journal of
Cleaner Production, vol. 273, 2020.
Liao, L., Lin, T., Zhang, Y., Corporate Board and Corporate Social Responsibility Assurance: Evidence from
China. J Bus Ethics 150, 211–225, 2018.
Lu, Y., Industry 4.0: A survey on technologies, applications and open research issues. Journal of Industrial
Information Integration, vol. 6, pp. 1–10, 2017.
Luz Tortorella, G., Cauchick-Miguel, P.A., Li, W., Staines, J., McFarlane, D., What does operational excellence
mean in the Fourth Industrial Revolution era?, International Journal of Production Research, pp. 1–17,
2021.
Pereira, A.C., Dinis-Carvalho, J., Alves, A.C., Arezes, P., How Industry 4.0 can enhance lean practices, FME
Transactions, vol. 47, pp. 810–822, 2019.
Radziwill, N.M., 2018. The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Klaus Schwab. World Economic Forum, Geneva,
Switzerland. 184 pages. Quality Management Journal 25, 108–109, 2016.
Raj, A., Dwivedi, G., Sharma, A., Lopes de Sousa Jabbour, A.B., Rajak, S., Barriers to the adoption of industry 4.0
technologies in the manufacturing sector: An inter-country comparative perspective. International Journal
of Production Economics 224, 107546, 2020.
Rossini, M., Costa, F., Staudacher, A.P., Tortorella, G., Industry 4.0 and lean production: An empirical study, IFAC-
PapersOnLine, vol. 52, pp. 42–47, 2019.
Salah, S., Rahim, A., Carretero, J.A., The integration of Six Sigma and lean management. Lean Six Sigma Journal
1, 249–274, 2010.
Santos, P.H.A., Martins, R.A., Continuous improvement programs and industry 4.0: Descriptive bibliometric
analysis, Presented at the International Conference on Quality Engineering and Management, pp. 683–
697, 2020.
Schneider, M., Michalicki, M., Rittberger, S., Lean and Industry 4.0—How to Develop a Lean Digitalization
Strategy with the Value Stream Method. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, 2020.
Sodhi, H., When Industry 4.0 meets Lean Six Sigma: A review, IEJ 13, 2020.
Sony, M., Design of cyber physical system architecture for industry 4.0 through lean six sigma: conceptual
foundations and research issues, Production and Manufacturing Research, vol. 8, pp.158–181, 2020.
Titmarsh, R., Assad, F., Harrison, R., Contributions of lean six sigma to sustainable manufacturing requirements: An
industry 4.0 perspective, Presented at the Procedia CIRP, pp. 589–593, 2020.
Tortorella, G., Miorando, R., Mac Cawley, A.F., The moderating effect of Industry 4.0 on the relationship between
lean supply chain management and performance improvement, Supply Chain Management, vol. 24, pp.
301–314, 2019.
Tortorella, G., Sawhney, R., Jurburg, D., de Paula, I.C., Tlapa, D., Thurer, M., Towards the proposition of a Lean
Automation framework: Integrating Industry 4.0 into Lean Production, Journal of Manufacturing
Technology Management, vol. 32, pp. 593–620, 2020.
Tortorella, G., Sawhney, R., Jurburg, D., de Paula, I.C., Tlapa, D., Thurer, M., Towards the proposition of a Lean
Automation framework Integrating Industry 4.0 into Lean Production, J. Manuf. Technol. Manag
Tortorella, G.L., Fettermann, D., Implementation of Industry 4.0 and lean production in Brazilian manufacturing
companies, Int. J. Prod. Res, vol. 56, pp. 2975–2987, 2018.
Tortorella, G.L., Narayanamurthy, G., Thurer, M., Identifying pathways to a high-performing lean automation
implementation: An empirical study in the manufacturing industry, International Journal of Production
Economics, vol. 231, 2021.
Touriki, F.E., Benkhati, I., Kamble, S.S., Belhadi, A., El fezazi, S., An integrated smart, green, resilient, and lean
manufacturing framework: A literature review and future research directions, Journal of Cleaner
Production, vol. 319, pp. 128691, 2021.
Weking, J., Stöcker, M., Kowalkiewicz, M., Böhm, M., Krcmar, H., Leveraging industry 4.0 – A business model
pattern framework. International Journal of Production Economics 225, 107588, 2020.
Womack, J.P., Jones, D.T., Roos, D., n.d. The Machine That Changed The World 11.
Yadav, N., Shankar, R., Singh, S.P., Critical success factors for lean six sigma in quality 4.0, International Journal
of Quality and Service Sciences, vol. 13, pp. 123–156, 2021.
Yin et al. - The evolution of production systems from Industry .pdf, n.d, 2018.
Yin, Y., Stecke, K.E., Li, D.,The evolution of production systems from Industry 2.0 through Industry 4.0.
International Journal of Production Research 56, 848–861, 2018.

IEOM Society International 420

Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022

Biographies
Dounia SKALLI is a Phd student at Laboratory of Engineering, Industrial Management and Innovation, Faculty of
Sciences and Technology, Hassan 1st University Settat, Morocco. She holds a Diploma as an Industrial Engineer at
the National School of Applied Sciences of Safi (ENSA-Safi) Morocco and worked for many years as a project
manager in fuel and gaz [Link] current research is focused on the integration of industry 4.0 and Lean six
sigma.

Abdelkbir CHARKAOUI is a PhD in Logistics & SCM. Professor at Hassan 1st University, Faculty of Science
and Technology - Settat, Morocco. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Laboratory Industrial Management and
Innovation (LIMMII). Research interests are in operations management, logistics performance and maturity of Lean
Manufacturing.

Anass CHERRAFI is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering, ENSAM-Meknes,

Moulay Ismail University UMI, Morocco. Holding a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering, he has seven years of industry
and teaching experience. He has published a number of articles in leading international journals and conference
proceedings, and has been a Guest Editor for special issues of various international journals. His research interests
include Industry 4.0, green manufacturing, Lean Six Sigma, integrated management systems and supply chain
management.

IEOM Society International 421