Product architectures and global operations networks

We investigate the relationship between product and supply chain architectures. Both products and supply chains can have modular as well as integral designs. We synthesize previous research on both product and supply chain architectures and explore this relationship in a multi-method study, including a survey of 82 manufacturing firms and a multiple-case study of ten products and their respective global supply chains. We identify a number of factors that characterize each combination of product and supply chain architecture and find that all combinations of integral and m