Dispersed manufacturing networks: challenges for research and practice

Customers in geographically dispersed, emerging and established global markets nowadays demand higher quality products in a greater variety and at lower cost in a shorter time. As a result, firms have been forced to reorganize their activities and realign their global strategies in order to provide the speed and flexibility necessary to respond to windows of market opportunity. Consequently, organizations have moved from centralized, vertically integrated, single-site manufacturing facilities to geographically dispersed networks of resources. Additionally, in order to acquire technological know-how and assets quickly, or to acquire a local presence in new and distant markets, strategic partners are increasingly part of the network structure. The changes require adaptations by companies to fit the characteristics of industrial networks in dynamic environments:

• firstly, network configurations require a control structure and organizational structure that fits the actual demand, and companies have started to move away from the control paradigm of the monolithic company towards managing the emergent properties of networks;
• secondly, with the move towards OEMs as network players there has been a greater tendency for manufacturing to become a commodity, which has accelerated under the regime of brand owners;
• thirdly, the added value of industrial networks includes more product and process innovations and the extension of capabilities with manufacturing services.

Industrial networks provide an answer to the current challenges of innovative potential, responsiveness and flexibility through their capability for absorbing change and capturing market opportunities. The emerging possibilities of information technology and data-communication, the globalization of markets, and the ongoing specialization of firms have paved the way for Dispersed Manufacturing Networks as organizational manifestation for collaboration and coordination across loosely connected agents.

Dispersed Manufacturing Networks provides new perspectives of Dispersed Manufacturing Systems from the point of view offered by complex systems theory. The book elaborates on issues of coordination and planning and offers new solutions for logistics problems and for developing cooperation in engineering networks. These methods and tools offer pathways to the development of integrative approaches. In addition, the impact of globalization is discussed for both managerial decision-making and operational performance of supply chains. A strong emphasis is made on the need for continuous decision-making with recognition of the fact that networks of loosely connected agents require different approaches.