Evaluation of Decentralized Manufacturing via System Dynamics Simulation: A Review of the State-of-the-art

The global economy is undergoing radical and accelerated transformation owing to technological, social, economic, environmental, and political forces. To adapt to a constantly changing business landscape especially in mature and emerging economies, one alternative available to producers of tangible goods is decentralized manufacturing. When the cost, quality, logistics, and risk factors permit, organizations could spread out, aka decentralize, their production processes locally and/or closer to the customer’s location thereby servicing customer expectations better through, among other things, quicker order fulfillment. Given its ostensible potential benefits, Decentralized Manufacturing needs to be evaluated more, but given its relative recency, data on its adoption and impact is correspondingly scarce. System Dynamics (SD) simulation offers a robust method to transcend data scarcity issues to evaluate a system holistically. This study provides a review of the state-of-the-art of the intersection of Decentralized Manufacturing and SD that we hope will lay the foundations for further studies on a deeper understanding of Decentralized Manufacturing and its large-scale adoption.