Urban Manufacturing of Sustainable Customer-Oriented Products

Personalization and sustainability are becoming driving forces to achieve a leading role in a fast-changing market. Therefore, manufacturers need to become more agile and flexible, introduce personalized products and customer-oriented services, measure and capitalize environmental intangibles. To answer to those requirements, this paper addresses the key elements characterizing the urban manufacturing concept, thought as an innovative production scenario leveraging closeness to customer, customization and sustainability. Such a framework is based on innovative technologies enabling collaborative short value chains and responsive production in constrained environments, for customer-oriented products and services. The main aspects, discussed in this paper, defining the proposed production paradigm are: (1) Product customization and digitalization; (2) Sustainability; (3) Flexible and short supply chain; (4) Responsive production systems; (5) Design to manufacturing in one step; (6) Industrial symbiosis; (7) open innovation. Two application cases in the furniture and footwear sectors are discussed, highlighting experienced benefits, open challenges and future research directions.