Abstract

The paper explores how the opening of innovative manufacturing production systems to the recognition and implementation of multiple technological developments generates new supply chain relationships, which end up affecting internal economic operators (suppliers of raw materials and semi-finished products, client companies, etc.) and external actors, such as innovators (innovation communities, start-ups, accelerators, etc.). Manufacturing systems in small businesses have become smarter by slowly adopting and merging mainly the three digital approaches with manufacturing and process technologies at the threshold of a fourth industrial revolution affecting several industries. This contribution aims to illustrate, and if possible even emphasize, the importance that small Italian manufacturing companies must reserve to the production area, the area of procurement, relationships in digital supply chains. It should be noted that the focus is mainly on «upstream» relationships (supplier side or «supply side» optics) within innovative manufacturing chains