Understanding intra-manufacturing network coordination : learnings from complex adaptive systems

The coordination of intra-manufacturing networks is a challenging task. Mechanisms to coordinate a manufacturing network are often discussed in isolation and are not put into a broader context to understand its influence on the intra-manufacturing network. Casestudy based, we discuss the challenges global production managers face in their aim to unlock the potential of the manufacturing network. We argue that manufacturing networks need to be analysed as complex adaptive systems (CAS). It is our aim to show how the understanding of CAS helps to describe the challenges of manufacturing network coordination