Reshoring of Manufacturing - Drivers, Opportunities, and Challenges

The Springer series addressing Operations Management, MEOP - Measuring Operations Performance is devoting its next peer-reviewed volume to the topic of Reshoring of Manufacturing. Interest in Reshoring strategies – intended as companies' decisions to reverse previous off-shoring by bringing manufacturing back home – has gained momentum recently. However, little is known so far about the magnitude of this phenomenon, about its geographical boundaries, and about the underlying motivations. In spite of this interest, academic attention is lagging behind, and research is characterized by the lack of a shared definition, of a full understanding of the extent and drivers of the phenomenon, its opportunities as well as the main challenges. Decisions to implement Reshoring strategies mainly concern those companies for which the home country is at a mature stage (United States, Western Europe, Japan) and the host country is a developing or emerging markets (Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America). In addition, Reshoring affects all sectors, both in capital-intensive than those that are labour-intensive. By observing the initiatives implemented by governments of the home country, it is noted that the importance given to the phenomenon varies greatly, and not always, it has a positive correlation with the number of repatriations. One example is Italy, which is emerging as the second country in number of Reshoring decisions, but in which no relief is put in place in order to encourage entrepreneurs to come back.

However, the economic policies implemented by a government can have a crucial impact on the location choices of entrepreneurs, as shown by the United States, which is the country with the highest number of Reshoring decisions and where the government is actively working to facilitate the process. Knowledge about Reshoring stems from a fragmented collection of case studies as part of inter-university consortia such as Uni-CLUB MoRe, initiatives such as the American Reshoring Initiative, institutions such as the Fraunhofer Institute and the German consulting firm, such as Boston Consulting Group. The result is that there is no comprehensive overview of the phenomenon to analyse it in a systematic and comprehensive manner. There is also evidence that scarce attention has so far been devoted to the analysis of the drivers, opportunities and the challenges. As such there is the need to further investigate the phenomenon of Reshoring.

This volume will focus on Reshoring in an era of Globalization. It will seek to assess the state of Reshoring and how recent developments, whether pertaining to configuration, technology, the environment and otherwise are impacting it in terms of its content and direction and in other ways and in its relationship to Manufacturing Performance. To this purpose, contributions are invited that address the above theme focusing on the following topics. However, this is not an exclusive list and all contributions that relate to the theme will be considered.

• The state of Reshoring within International Manufacturing Strategy
• Forces and drivers influencing Reshoring
• International Supply Chain Transformations as a result of Reshoring
• Changing configuration conditions and International Manufacturing Strategy as a result of Reshoring
• ICT and Reshoring
• Opportunities associated with Reshoring
• Challenges associated with Reshoring
• Reshoring and the Green agenda
• The circular economy and the impact of sustainability
• Risk and resilience of Reshoring
• The influence of emerging technologies on Reshoring
• The interplay of Reshoring and servitisation
• Emerging Multinationals and their impact on Reshoring
• Data analytics and Reshoring

The editor will select submissions for peer review. In particular papers adopting a case-study approach are particularly welcome.

The following are the key dates:

• Proposals Submission: 31/12/2016
• Proposals Acceptance: 15/01/2016
• Full Paper Submission due: 15/02/2017
• Editors select submissions for peer review: 15/03/2017
• Reviews returned to contributors with directions from editors: 15/04/2017
• Resubmissions of the final manuscript due: 15/05/2017

Proposal submissions should be sent to the volume editor Professor Alessandra Vecchi (email alessandra.vecchi@unibo.it) no later than 31/12/16. The book will be suitable to be used as a teaching aid in a variety of courses in different disciplines (ranging from International Business, Operations Management to Production Management) both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Additionally the book will be relevant to academic, researchers and practitioners who have a keen interest in the manufacturing industry.