Development of Distributed Manufacturing Systems (DMS) concept

Nowadays, Manufacturing enterprises in mature economies are facing a challenge how to grow on the long-term, while coping with the increasing competitive pressure of low-labour cost countries. To achieve a long-term success, manufacturers have to effectively and efficiently meet both policy makers constraints and the customers requirement, those are asking for a more environmentally and social sustainable production. Distributed Manufacturing Systems (DMS) appear to be as one of the possible answer. Consequently, they are gaining more and more attention among academic debates as well as in the manufacturing world. A multitude of models with different peculiarities have been proposed under this denomination throughout the last decades, thus resulting in an increased confusion about the concept of DMS. For this reason, this paper aims at identifying the evolution of the DMS concept by applying a systematic literature review and classification of different DMS framework presented in the scientific literature. From this study emerges that DMS models evolved from the 80s, where they were identified as a decentralized form of production control, to 00s, where they have been identified alternatively as a geographical distributed manufacturing systems and as an enterprises network.