The effects of personalization on collaborative production networks location

Abstract

This paper focuses on the identification of proper localization for collaborative production networks for personalized products. By the analysis of five case studies of the Italian footwear industry, the research provides the relationship between the type of personalization and the required supply network configurations by considering the production location issue, which is a topic not addressed in the literature. The research demonstrates that since personalization is most of the time managed in parallel with mass production thus companies should be able to manage different network configurations by developing a local or global network based on the level of product personalization.