Lean Manufacturing has been so successfully implemented that it has become the de facto method of manufacturing. However, all such activities are subject to the law of diminishing returns, leaving many manufacturers wondering where the next big gains are to come from. For many, Industrie 4.0 would seem to offer the solution. However, for an organisation balancing competing  priorities with limited resources, should the focus be on ‘smart manufacturing’- defined as comprising such things as increased production output, quality, safety, and yield? Or ‘connected products’, defined as applying to Industry 4.0 to vehicles and industrial machinery in order to facilitate remote diagnostics, remote maintenance, and remote data capture, up to and including servitization? Or should their focus be the ‘connected’ value chain, defined as applying Industry 4.0 in order to increase the visibility and coordination of both inbound and outbound activity?

This paper explores this very real dilemma for manufacturing organisations and proposes a simple audit tool as a starting point that an organisation can use to identify how their practice of Lean might be extended to leverage the benefits of Industrie 4.0.