Manufacturing Location Decisions and Global Sourcing Strategies
Summary
Manufacturing location decisions and global sourcing strategies encompass the processes by which firms determine where to produce goods and how to organise their international supply networks. These decisions balance cost considerations, such as labour and logistics, against quality, lead-time and strategic proximity to key markets. In recent years, concerns over resilience, sustainability and geopolitical risk have led companies to reassess lengthy global value chains and explore reshoring or near-shoring alternatives. Advances in digital technologies, including artificial intelligence and automation, have further influenced location-based trade-offs, enabling more agile production footprints and hybrid models that integrate centralised high-volume plants with localised micro-factories. The result is a more nuanced palette of sourcing options, from traditional offshoring to distributed manufacturing and dual-sourcing approaches, each designed to enhance flexibility, reduce vulnerability to disruption and align production closer to evolving consumer demands.
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Manufacturing Location Decisions and Global Sourcing Strategies publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in manufacturing location decisions and global sourcing strategies across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Reshoring: The relocation of manufacturing activities from foreign sites back to the company’s home country.
Offshoring: The transfer of production or services to a foreign country, often to leverage lower labour or operational costs.
Backshoring: A subset of reshoring where previously offshored activities are specifically returned to domestic locations.
Global value chain: The full range of activities that firms and workers perform to bring a product from conception through design, production and distribution.
Dual sourcing: A procurement strategy that combines local and international suppliers to balance risk, flexibility and cost efficiency.
References
- Reshoring: A review and research agenda. Journal of Business Research (2023).
- Artificial intelligence and relocation of production activities: An empirical cross-national study. International Journal of Production Economics (2023).
- Distributed manufacturing: a new form of localised production?. International Journal of Operations & Production Management (2020).
- Reshoring by small firms: dual sourcing strategies and local subcontracting in value chains. Cambridge Journal of Regions Economy and Society (2022).
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