Abstract
Even though manufacturing factories are characterized by an high level of innovation, the efficiency of process' production on this field suffers from the increasing competition due to low cost labor countries. Indeed, for manufacturing environments, nowadays it is essential having adequate capacity to achieve increasing output volume and decreasing production costs. In some cases the problem of mixed volumes and productions on assembly lines is faced through the application of either lean manufacturing principles, agile manufacturing ones or their combination. Literature has sought for assessing the relationship between lean manufacturing and agile manufacturing, focusing on practical cases involving US manufacturers, but no clear results have been achieved. Thus, the present work has a twofold aim: analyzing the current level of implementation of lean manufacturing principles and agile manufacturing onesamong Italian manufacturers and assessing the relationship among lean and agile with reference to the Italian context. In order to achieve such a challenging result, a survey involving Italian manufacturing companies is proposed.
