ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationship between investments in new digital production technologies, which are currently discussed under headings such as ‘Industry 4.0’ or ‘Industrial Internet of Things’, and reshoring or backshoring decisions of manufacturing companies. Reshoring or backshoring can origin from and be relocated to wholly owned production sites of the company as well as from foreign suppliers or to home-based suppliers, thus covering different ownership modes of manufacturing in the host and home countries. Reshoring decisions may thus result from the limited abilities of companies to sufficiently develop and maintain such critical capabilities in foreign locations, or to exploit the host country’s resources in order to create competitive advantage for the multi-national company as a whole. Advanced production technologies also come into play. The relationship between reshoring/backshoring activities and the use of I4.0 technologies is tested with German data from the 2015 edition of the equipment manufacturers.
