Digital Lean Practices in High-Mix, Low-Volume Manufacturing: A Case Study of Manitowoc

The transition from mass production to increased customization exposes companies to challenges, particularly in the low-volume, high-mix sector. In this regard, Lean practices and digitalization were applied in this research work at Manitowoc - a global leader in crane manufacturing - to improve production process performance characteristics. Consequently, digitizing work standards and visual management helped the company to minimize errors and enhance operational quality. These have led to tremendous decrease of color mistakes as well as improve resource optimization that strengthened self-control and accountability of teams over their tasks.