Integration of Lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to identify the prominent research constituents in the domain of integration of Lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0 techniques and analyze the intellectual structure among them.

Design/methodology/approach

A bibliometric analysis of articles based on Donthu et al. (2021a) has been adopted to conduct a systematic review of the integration of Lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0 using the Scopus database.

Findings

The co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling depicted three clusters and themes around which the research related to the integration of Lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0. Publications related to the topic have majorly focused on the development of conceptual models and frameworks for integrating Lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0, analyzing the compatibility between the two techniques for better implementation of one another and the techniques' combined impact on operational performance.

Originality/value

Most of the review studies related to the domain of integration of Lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0 have adopted a systematic literature review methodology. The present study has tried to infer the intellectual framework of the research being conducted in the said domain using the bibliometric analysis to identify the prominent research constituents in the field and examine the intellectual relationship between them.

Citation

Kumar, N., Singh, A., Gupta, S., Kaswan, M.S. and Singh, M. (2024), "Integration of Lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0: a bibliometric analysis", The TQM Journal, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 244-264. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-07-2022-0243