Lean management is an approach where value is created through the reduction of waste. Eight forms of waste were identified by the Toyota Company to be considered while managing an efficient production process: overproduction, waiting, transport, over processing, inventory, movement, defects, unused creativity. Modern manufacturing plants are being transformed by Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution, which promotes a wide variety of technological solutions to increase innovativeness and competitive advantages. Since the start of Industry 4.0, machines and tools have become smart, collecting data about the processes and products produced at the plants, as well as products themselves becoming smart and generating their own data. Collecting and analyzing the data is very important to enable manufacturers to be more strategic in the decision-making process and generate new profit channels through data analytics. Data analysts, robot and PLC programmers, and cybersecurity managers are highly demanding jobs in leading manufacturing companies. Big data must be analyzed, since ignoring the data analytics or performing poor data analysis could lead to waste in the manufacturing process and loss of profit. A conceptual framework was developed to investigate if the inefficient usage of data has a negative impact on manufacturing performance through the decision-making process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in leading manufacturing companies in Sweden that are following lean principles. A new form of waste, digital waste, was defined. This paper suggests considering digital waste as a new part of ‘muda’ (waste), which is its theoretical contribution. From the practical perspective, the results of the paper encourages practitioners to pay extra attention to data analytics, work on reduction of digital waste and establish new revenue channels based on data analysis.

@inproceedings{oscm-2019-475,
  title={Digital Muda – The New Form of Waste by Industry 4.0},
  year={2019},
  author={Jamila Alieva and Robin von Haartman},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Operations and Supply Chain Management, Vietnam, 2019},
  doi={10.31387/oscm410027}
}

Jamila Alieva, Robin von Haartman (2019). Digital Muda – The New Form of Waste by Industry 4.0. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Operations and Supply Chain Management, Vietnam, 2019. https://doi.org/10.31387/oscm410027