Open Access

Jan Christoph Meyer, Henrik Wienholdt, Thomas Novoszel

• Increased competition has continuously led to a shift of production locations from high-wage to low-wage countries. To counteract this development the manufacturing of customized goods at the costs of mass production is necessary. This goal can be reached by solving the polylemma of production. High Resolution Supply Chain Management provides an approach to achieve higher planning efficiency and production profitability by increased flexibility and value orientation of inter- and in-company production planning and control systems. High Resolution Supply Chain Management aims for the establishment of information transparency within supply chains which does not exist in today's production networks. This will assure the availability of goods by local, self-optimizing control loops. Prerequisite is the creation of communication interfaces and data standards. By assuring the information flow and defined control loops High Resolution Supply Chain Management leads to an adaptive and self-optimized production system. In the last few years globalization led to a higher stress of competition of producing companies in high-wage countries. Cost advantages in production, like lower wages and social contributions, result in a relocation of production plants from countries as e.g. the United States or Germany to low-wage countries. Besides the lower wages the higher profitability is due to cost-effective mass production through economies of scale. At the same time customers ask for more individualized and lower priced products lined up with the wish of shorter lead times. Thus, companies have to gain the capability to adapt rapidly to customers requests. Short customer response times, high flexibility in production planning and -control (PPC) and manufacturing are necessary. Thereby, one frequently neglected competitive advantage of production locations in high-wage countries is the customer proximity. Industry now realizes this advantage and strengthens its efforts towards individualized production. A competitive advantage for high-wage countries can therefore be gained if individualized products are produced at nearly the costs of mass production. Thus, the resolution of the polylemma of production is underlying condition for saving labor in high-wage countries.