Companies usually make serious commitments regarding relocation to certain locales because of manufacturing or distribution advantages.

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The first thing they did was decide to bring manufacturing home to the US. Very quickly they learned that local manufacturing had distinct advantages.

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The additive approach to manufacturing has several big advantages over the conventional one.

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Fourth, changes in the market convinced companies that there were significant cost and time-to-market advantages in manufacturing close to customers.

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But it also introduced so many unknowns into the manufacturing process that, for some, supposed advantages may turn out to be fleeting.

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Consider aircraft manufacturing, an industry in which a big producer has enormous cost advantages over a small one.

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