Examining the Impact of Key Enabling Technologies on Offshoring, Reshoring, Backshoring, and Nearshoring in Manufacturing Location Decisions: A Literature Review

This research focuses on the role of the latest key enabling technologies and innovations in manufacturing relocation decisions, as technological advancements have been recognized as one of the motivations to make such decisions (Turienzo & Lampon, 2022; Mclvor & Bals, 2021). In fact, automation helps reduce production costs. On the other hand, too much automation can reduce employment. Thus, this research aims to highlight the role of enabling technologies in relocation decisions, i.e., reshoring, near-shoring, and back-shoring. This research is intended to answer the following research question: “How are the key enabling technologies interplaying manufacturing locations decisions (reshoring, back shoring and near shoring)?” In previous literature, scholars have highlighted the different technologies that may drive reshoring decisions. Among others, the followings technologies have been identified and investigated: Additive manufacturing, Automation, Cloud, Digital Tools, IIoT, Information Technology, Machine Tools, Industry4.0, Robotic Process Automation, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, Hybrid cloud platforms and blockchain (Ko et al., 2022; Fratocchi, L & Di Stefano, C., 2020; Ancarani and Di Mauro, 2018; Foster, 2016). The nature of the research is exploratory, the best-suited method is multiple case studies developed through semi-structured interviews (Yin, 2009). The four cases will be selected based on snowball sampling. Triangulation will be achieved through multiple sources of information, such as companies’ documents, websites, news articles, and interview data. The data will be analyzed through within-case and cross-case analyses (Eisenhardt, 1989). This research will fill the gap about the role played by key enabling technologies and which technologies are significant. So, this research brings in-depth insights into the technological effects on relocation decisions. The outcome will add to literature on relocation decisions by disentangling technologies' specific role. Moreover, it will contribute to the practitioners and policymakers by bringing on-hand experiences of how different technologies can play multifold roles in a relocation decisions.