Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, manufac-turing facilities have located in proximity to low-cost labor. Advances in technology will continue to reduce labor as a percentage of a product's cost. As a result, other factors will increasingly determine the location of manu-facturing. For example, if governments respond to global warming by taxing products' carbon footprints, manufac-turing facilities could decentralize and locate closer to de-mand, paralleling the locavore movement seen in food sup-ply. Alternately, facilities could locate closer to raw material supplies (including low-impact power sources). Whether regulation, environmental concerns, taxes, or end-user de-mand ... labor cost will no longer be the determining factor in supply chain design.
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