Design of redistributed manufacturing networks: a model-based framework

Throughout the last century, manufacturing has been characterised by mass production conducted in central facilities, benefitting from economies-of-scale. These central facilities supply, and are supplied by sprawling, complex supply chains that are slow to adapt to demand changes and supply disruptions. As production strategies are gradually shifting from economies-of-scale to economies-of-scope to cater for increasingly complex heterogeneous demand and shorter product life cycles, new configurations are required to enable manufacturing systems to accommodate these demand changes efficiently. One area that has the potential to improve the responsiveness of manufacturing systems is redistributed manufacturing (RdM). RdM is a manufacturing paradigm where production is performed in a network of small, autonomous and geographically distributed facilities. Motivated by the potential opportunities that RdM could bring, this thesis develops a model-based decision-making framework for the design and operation of RdM networks. The framework is context-independent, addresses strategic, tactical and operational decision-making levels and accounts for the interdependence between these decisions in a stochastic environment. The framework is validated methodically through computational experiments on two case studies of different natures and objectives. Experts opinions were solicited throughout the design stage of this research, the implementation of the case studies and the analysis of the results. Results reveal that even when the objectives of the modelled systems are substantially different, the framework generates consistent outputs. The main takeout from the experiments’ results is that the RdM paradigm consistently produces significantly better service level performance, demonstrated by fewer occurrences of unmet demands and shorter lead times. However, although sufficiently close, the RdM paradigm is not as cost efficient as the traditional centralised manufacturing paradigm.