To profit from cost differences, growth opportunities in emerging markets, lower transaction costs, and fewer trade barriers, manufacturing companies have strongly driven their internationalization efforts over recent decades. However, uncertainties caused by shifting economic forces, conservative winds, and protectionism as well as events such as the COVID-19 pandemic reveal the strong vulnerability of International Manufacturing Networks. Consequently, companies are reevaluating their optimization efforts of often opposing target dimensions such as efficiency, flexibility, time, and quality. Based on a benchmarking study conducted in 2020, this chapter systematically examines today’s business environment of International Manufacturing Networks and its implications on the management of those networks for practitioners.
Production Management
Prof. Thomas Friedli
News
Find all news articles in our archive.

On the 22nd of March 2023 we, together with our partners, kicked off our next Innosuisse-funded project Ecosystem Based Steering of Global Production Networks. By that, we continue our efforts of our successfully completed Innosuisse-project Intelligence-based manufacturing networks.

We are going into the second round!
After the great success in 2022 we started our Global Production Academy this year in Karlsruhe with a visit of the research factory at the Institute of Production Science of the KIT.

The final conference on the 1st of March in Aachen was the last get-together in our Consortium Benchmarking Artificial Intelligence in Operations.

The final conference closed the consortium benchmarking global productions strategies 2022. Prof. Dr. Thomas Friedli and Prof. Dr. Klaus Möller gave insights from research with their keynote speeches. Also, the five visits at Dätwyler, Festo, IMS:Gear, Schott and Kuka were summarized and discussed.
Our Focus Areas




The topic of the 2023 conference is "The Future of Global Manufacturing and the Role of Europe: Pathways to Sustainable Competitiveness".

CAS Production Management
In the course of increasing digitalization, production faces new opportunities and challenges. New skills and methods must complement existing experience. This CAS (Certificate of Advanced Studies) transports the latest findings in the field of production management into operational practice. The course is held in collaboration with HSR Rapperswil. Course language is German.
Team
Research Projects


From customer solutions to value-based pricing models.

We want to enable a structured exchange on digitalization in manufacturing companies in-between managers and experts from practice and science.

Objective of this Innosuisse project is to design, develop and implement a data and corporate strategy based manufacturing network dashboard which supports in strategic decisions.

Discuss the excellence journey of your lab operations on a new level

We analyze the state of the Swiss manufacturing industry regarding trends in production and especially their attitude and activities in off- or re-shoring operations.

Can we predict adverse regulatory inspection outcomes for you?
Selected Publications
Kaiser, J., & Remling, D. (2021). Managing International Manufacturing Networks in Today’s Business Environment. In Global Manufacturing Management (pp. 63–76). Springer, Cham.
Verhaelen, B., Kaiser, J., Remling, D., Peukert, S., Lanza, G., & Friedli, T. (2022). Standortspezifische Leistungsziele in globalen Produktionsnetzwerken - Empirische Erkenntnisse aus einer internationalen Benchmarking-Studie. Controlling : Zeitschrift für erfolgsorientierte Unternehmenssteuerung. (2).
Die Steuerung global verteilter Produktionsstandorte erfolgt in der Praxis häufig über jährlich vorgegebene, prozentuale Verbesserungen von Produktivitätskennzahlen aus der Unternehmenszentrale ohne Beachtung des standortspezifischen Kontextes. In diesem Artikel werden Standortrollen, geeignete Steuerungstypen und Kennzahlen analysiert, um das Potenzial internationaler Standorte besser auszuschöpfen.
Kaiser, J., Saretz, B., & Friedli, T. (2022). Strategic site reasons re-visited, digging deeper in the rationale of global manufacturing networks: An empirical study from a headquarters perspective. In Proceedings of the 6th World Conference on Production and Operations Management. P & OM 2022 (pp. 364–373). [Nagoya]: [Japanese Operations Management and Strategy Association].
The site role concept developed by Ferdows and empirically tested by Vereecke et al. discusses the specific advantages of globally distributed manufacturing plants. It conceptualizes the primary reasons for manufacturing sites to exist–the strategic site reasons. This article presents the results of a multiple case study further examining the reasons to establish a site, the sites' main advantage today, and related contingency factors. The findings show that the main reasons to establish or acquire a manufacturing site are access to low-cost labor, new technologies, and reliable transportation. The most stable reason over time is access to skills and know-how.