Challenges to Lean 4.0 in the pharma supply chain sustainability

The Pharma sector is increasingly under pressure to improve the sustainability of supply chains, as consumers and regulators require greater transparency, efficiency, and accountability. Although Lean 4.0 has created a lot of buzz in the organization, the pharmaceutical sector faces challenges in implementing it. The main goal of this literature review is to identify the challenges of Lean 4.0 for the sustainability of the pharma supply chains (PSCs). A series of papers extracted from the most relevant scientific databases, including the Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and ProQuest was analyzed and synthesized from 2007 to 2022. 31 articles were used in the study. The findings of the study indicate that challenges include financial, staff experience and specialization, ongoing maintenance, resources for generating new skills and experiences, employees, and partners’ resistance to changes in regulations, and cyber-hacking of key information. The results will facilitate future work by practitioners and researchers and make an important contribution to existing knowledge.