Corporate survival in Industry 4.0 era: the enabling role of lean-digitized manufacturing

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how small manufacturing firms can leverage their Information Technology (IT) resources to develop the lean-digitized manufacturing system that offers sustained competitiveness in the Industry 4.0 era. Design/methodology/approach The study performs an in-depth five years case study of a manufacturing firm, and reports its journey from failure in the implementation of enterprise resource planning to its success in integrating IT-based technology trends of Industry 4.0 with the firm’s core capabilities and competencies while pursuing manufacturing digitization. Findings Industry 4.0 transition requires the organizational integration of many IT-based modern…