Distributed Manufacturing

Overview

Strategy using multiple smaller regional plants rather than centralized large-scale facilities, offering supply chain resilience and proximity to patients but challenged by loss of the economies of scale that have traditionally justified large-batch biologics manufacturing Distributed manufacturing — placing smaller plants in multiple countries — improves supply chain resilience and patient proximity but currently cannot match the economies of scale achieved by large centralized facilities, creating a cost gap that data integration and AI may help bridge. Global AI integration with centralized quality and analytical capacity is proposed as the mechanism to reduce site-to-site overhead and achieve distributed-yet-standardized manufacturing economics; no company has demonstrated this at scale as of 2026. (Segment 3 (10:00-15:00))