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.
