Global megatrends create transformation pressure  on the manufacturing industry and their global production networks. Our recent study on “Managing global production networks” analyzed how companies are achieving high performing  production networks e.g. by managing network goals, network structure and network coordination. It became obvious that  today’s global competition requires companies to strengthen network capabilities vs. a site capabilities and are able to constantly evolve the network design to respond to the dynamic market in an agile way. Key discipline is the strategic management  of the network with a holistic optimization of the entire network. There is a clear requirement of a higher degree of centralization and standardization whilst meeting local requirements at the same time. High performing companies have established a regular knowledge transfer between the plants and a regular KPI-based performance measurement of the entire network.