Implementing industry 4.0 technologies in lean production through e-kanban automotive production

In Lean Production environments, the need to supply the right quantity of material at the right times is the most important issue within a shop floor. Usually a kanban is made by two cards exchanged between the line and the warehouse with respect to the actual demand. When the number of lines served by a kanban system increases, the amount of kanban cards travelling in the shop floor may cause the loss of kanban cards, human errors in kanban emission and incorrect quantities supplied to the lines. This paper fronts these problems using the enabling technologies of Industry 4.0 to overcome the limits of traditional kanban cards. Within the case study, an electronic Kanban system (e-Kanban) has been implemented using wireless technologies to communicate the supplying information between the lines and a central supermarket. Within the research framework the deployment of the e-Kanban system is described in details. A benchmarking with the previous lean organization is conducted to appreciate the improvements obtained.