Global production networks connect partners with outstanding expertise, and make use of regional cost advantages for purchasing and production operations. This development leads to an increasing structural complexity of the networks, which is accompanied by a closer collaboration of dynamic logistics processes. Hence, the resulting dynamics of a large-scale production network is characterized by the dynamics of the individual logistics processes, the dynamics of the network structure and dynamics of the external processes that affect the production network. However, in practice a lack of adequate procedures for the analysis and design of these networks can be observed. The presented article addresses this need by introducing tools and methods for the approximation of large-scale production networks, analysis of their dynamics and the robust design of the network resources.
