This study aims at examining the impact of the interrelation between Industry 4.0 technologies implementation and the adoption of Lean Production (LP) practices on the improvement level of manufacturers' operational performance. Further, it investigates how this connection might occur under the effect of four contextual factors deemed as influential by previous literature, such as company size, LP implementation experience, type of ownership and business operating model. To achieve that, we carried out a survey with 108 European manufacturers that have been implementing LP practices and already started to approach Industry 4.0 technologies. The collected data was analyzed through multivariate techniques. Results underpin the idea of a wide applicability of both approaches, regardless of the contextual factors involved. Further, findings evidence that higher adoption levels of Industry 4.0 may be easier to achieve when LP practices are extensively implemented in the company. In opposition, when processes are not robustly designed and continuous improvement practices are not established, companies may not be ready on adopting novel technologies either. By comprehending that Industry 4.0 technologies are highly related to LP practices, disregarding the context, managers from EU manufacturers can address the implementation of both approaches in a more assertive way.

This study aims at investigating whether EI constitutes the mediating link relating Industry 4.0 technologies to operational performance improvement in emerging countries. When manufacturing companies within this socio-economic context adopt Industry 4.0 technologies, they may either reinforce or undermine the importance of practices related to EI, hence affecting the level of operational performance improvement. In this sense, we carried out a survey with 147 Brazilian manufacturers that have already started to implement Industry 4.0 technologies concurrently with their existing continuous improvement programs, which are highly based on EI practices. Findings indicate the EI indeed has a positive mediating effect on the relationship between Industry 4.0 adoption and operational performance improvement. This outcome suggests that the high-tech movement promoted by Industry 4.0 advent does not disregard the need for empowering and committing employees. This fact is also true even in contexts where employees' condition may rise additional barriers for Industry 4.0 implementation, such as emerging economies. Therefore, the implementation of Industry 4.0 seems to be a promising approach for assisting employees on continuous improvement and reinforcing the need for their participation and engagement, especially in manufacturers from sectors with higher levels of technological intensity.

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The performances of three workload limiting policies are analysed, and the following are the three objectives: (i) assessing whether the method of workload limiting a ects the performances of Order Review and Release strategies; (ii) investigating the performances of the workload limiting methods when the mix imbalance changes; (iii) evaluating the robustness of the workload limiting methods considered. The methodological pattern followed required a simulation model of a dynamic job shop system and all the workload limiting methods are tested by resorting to a fractional factorial experimental design with repetitions. Results coming from simulation campaign show that the`upper bound only' method is the best performer. Furthermore three di erent mix imbalance levels have been tested, showing that`workload balancing' method allows closer performances to those of the`upper bound only'. Finally`workload balancing' is proven to be the most robust, but not all the results are statistically signi®cant for all performance indexes.

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