This book examines key aspects of the increasingly important phenomenon of reshoring – the decision of companies to reverse offshoring by bringing manufacturing back from overseas. The aim is to equip readers with a full understanding of the current extent of reshoring, its drivers, and the associated opportunities and challenges. The impact of governments’ economic policies on the location choices of entrepreneurs in an era of globalization is carefully analyzed, drawing on experiences in the United States and Italy, where contrasting encouragement is provided for reshoring decisions. The effect on reshoring of recent developments regarding technology, the environment, and other factors is assessed in depth, and readers will also find close scrutiny of the relationship between reshoring and manufacturing performance. The book will be of interest to all academics, researchers, and practitioners with an interest in the manufacturing industry and will be an excellent teaching aid for a variety of courses in different disciplines at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Knowledge-intensive product realization implies embedded intelligence; meaning that if both theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding of a subject is integrated into the design and production processes of products, this will significantly increase added value. This book presents papers accepted for the 9th Swedish Production Symposium (SPS2020), hosted by the School of Engineering, Jönköping University, Sweden, and held online on 7 & 8 October 2020 because of restrictions due to the Corona virus pandemic. The subtitle of the conference was Knowledge Intensive Product Realization in Co-Operation for Future Sustainable Competitiveness. The book contains the 57 papers accepted for presentation at the conference, and these are divided into nine sections which reflect the topics covered: resource efficient production; flexible production; virtual production development; humans in production systems; circular production systems and maintenance; integrated product and production development; advanced and optimized components, materials and manufacturing; digitalization for smart products and services; and responsive and efficient operations and supply chains. In addition, the book presents five special sessions from the symposium: development of changeable and reconfigurable production systems; smart production system design and development; supply chain relocation; management of manufacturing digitalization; and additive manufacturing in the production system. The book will be of interest to all those working in the field of knowledge-intensive product realization.

The realization of a successful product requires collaboration between developers and producers, taking account of stakeholder value, reinforcing the contribution of industry to society and enhancing the wellbeing of workers while respecting planetary boundaries. Founded in 2006, the Swedish Production Academy (SPA) aims to drive and develop production research and education and to increase cooperation within the production area. This book presents the proceedings of the 10th Swedish Production Symposium (SPS2022), held in Skövde, Sweden, from 26-29 April 2022. The overall theme of the symposium was ‘Industry 5.0 Transformation – Towards a Sustainable, Human-Centric, and Resilient Production’. Since its inception in 2007, the purpose of SPS has been to facilitate an event at which members and interested participants from industry and academia can meet to exchange ideas. The 69 papers accepted for presentation here are grouped into ten sections: resource-efficient production; flexible production; humans in the production system; circular production systems and maintenance; integrated product and production development; industrial optimization and decision-making; cyber-physical production systems and digital twins; innovative production processes and additive manufacturing; smart and resilient supply chains; and linking research and education. Also included are three sections covering the Special Sessions at SPS2022: artificial intelligence and industrial analytics in industry 4.0; development of resilient and sustainable production systems; and boundary crossing and boundary objects in product and production development. The book will be of interest to all those involved in the development and production of future products.

The book discusses the opportunities and challenges of managing knowledge in the new reality of Industry 4.0. Addressing paradigmatic changes in value creation due to the development of digital technologies applied to manufacturing (additive manufacturing, IoT, robotics, etc.), it includes theoretical and empirical contributions on how Industry 4.0 technologies allow firms to create and exploit knowledge. The carefully selected expert contributions highlight the potential of these technologies in acquiring knowledge from a larger number of sources and examine approaches to innovation, organization of activities, and stakeholder development in the context of this next industrial revolution.

This book addresses the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on Central and East European countries and examines the effect the pandemic has had on organizations in the region. It focuses on the widely understood business environment, covering companies’ responses to the crisis, the role of institutions in stabilizing markets, and the reshaping of global business trends. The book is a complex and multidimensional work that draws its roots from distinct yet simultaneously interlinked research areas. All of the chapters, whether they refer to macro-, meso-, or micro-perspectives, always highlight how crises – global and regional – change the global trends we have observed in business in the last 20 years. The book includes the most topical issues that delineate public discourse on firms’ resilience. In this way, it ‘connects the dots’ and uncovers the missing links necessary for any reader wishing to understand the specificity of contemporary companies’ responses to unexpected events such as pandemics or geopolitical crises. Further, it tackles questions such as what role institutions play in building the adaptive capacity of companies, how companies build their resilience capacity for 21st-century crises, and what the significance is of the uncertainty, the information asymmetry, and the bounded rationality concept on the company’s decision-making process. The book will find a broad audience among academics and students across diverse fields of study, as well as practitioners and policymakers. It is a key reference for all those who want to better understand the complex nature of uncertainty, crisis management, and its implications, not only for CEE countries but, first and foremost, the business environment.

While acquisitions and expansion strategies are understood as exciting in the business world, contraction activities are received less enthusiastically. Nevertheless, portfolio restructuring constitutes a strategic tool to increase the strategic focus of firms and achieve economies of scale and an efficient control of multiple business units. This restructuring thus has distinct implications for companies and units. The Handbook of Research on Corporate Restructuring and Globalization provides emerging research on the theoretical infrastructure for portfolio restructuring in a single piece of work and explores important topics in the field including the implications on foreign and domestic units and the degree to which increasing globalization influences restructuring practices. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as emerging markets, risk assessment, and global business, this book is ideally designed for corporate managers, government officials, scholars, researchers, and students.

The two-volume set IFIP AICT 591 and 592 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International IFIP WG 5.7 Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems, APMS 2020, held in Novi Sad, Serbia, in August/September 2020. The 164 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 199 submissions. They discuss globally pressing issues in smart manufacturing, operations management, supply chain management, and Industry 4.0. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Part I: advanced modelling, simulation and data analytics in production and supply networks; advanced, digital and smart manufacturing; digital and virtual quality management systems; cloud-manufacturing; cyber-physical production systems and digital twins; IIOT interoperability; supply chain planning and optimization; digital and smart supply chain management; intelligent logistics networks management; artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies in logistics and DSN; novel production planning and control approaches; machine learning and artificial intelligence; connected, smart factories of the future; manufacturing systems engineering: agile, flexible, reconfigurable; digital assistance systems: augmented reality and virtual reality; circular products design and engineering; circular, green, sustainable manufacturing; environmental and social lifecycle assessments; socio-cultural aspects in production systems; data-driven manufacturing and services operations management; product-service systems in DSN; and collaborative design and engineering Part II: the Operator 4.0: new physical and cognitive evolutionary paths; digital transformation approaches in production management; digital transformation for more sustainable supply chains; data-driven applications in smart manufacturing and logistics systems; data-driven services: characteristics, trends and applications; the future of lean thinking and practice; digital lean manufacturing and its emerging practices; new reconfigurable, flexible or agile production systems in the era of industry 4.0; operations management in engineer-to-order manufacturing; production management in food supply chains; gastronomic service system design; product and asset life cycle management in the circular economy; and production ramp-up strategies for product

This multi-volume set covers a wide range of topics on innovation, which are all of great interest to academics, policymakers, university administrators, state and regional economic development officials, and students. Two unique features of the volume are the large body of global evidence on innovation presented and its consideration of the following timely and important topics in innovation: cybersecurity, open innovation, the globalization of R&D, and university technology transfer. Innovation is a topic of great importance in many fields in business administration, such as management, strategy, operations management, finance, marketing, and accounting, as well as in numerous social science disciplines, including economics, sociology, political science, and psychology. This volume fully reflects such interdisciplinary approaches.Volume 1 provides extensive global evidence on university technology transfer and innovation partnerships. Volume 2 is focused on the managerial and public policy implications of the globalization of R&D. Volume 3 presents start-of-the-art theoretical and empirical evidence on open innovation. Volume 4 is a comprehensive analysis of cybersecurity. This set is essential reading for those who wish to have a comprehensive understanding of the antecedents and consequences of innovation.