In 2019 
I organized a non-commercial Industry 4.0 tour for some friends through my university, the Karlsruhe University of Applied Science. For the first week in July 2019, we rented a van and toured southern Germany. We visited fourteen different locations in five days to understand the current state of Industry 4.0 in Germany. Almost all of these locations were Industry 4.0 award-winning enterprises. However, our assessment of Industry 4.0 often differed from these awards. Since we all come from the lean corner, we often have a different outlook on things than people who specialize in Industry 4.0. Let me give you an overview of our tour:
Industry 4.0
Lean and Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 is one of the hot topics of modern manufacturing, although some (myself included) say that it is overrated. Lean is one of the older but also still important topics in manufacturing. In this post I would like to compare lean and Industry 4.0. What are the differences, what are the commonalities? Can they complement each other or do they conflict?