Industrial value creation today is characterised in many sectors by globally distributed processes for product manufacturing based on the division of labour in order to achieve advantages through specialisation, scale and location. However, the economic advantages of this form of value creation are being increasingly diminished by the current ecological and social challenges. Local manufacturing has the potential to be a piece of the puzzle in the complex transformation process towards a sustainable circular economy. However, suitable framework conditions are needed for the successful implementation of economically, ecologically and socially sustainable forms of local value creation. To be able to develop these in a targeted manner, knowledge regarding the areas influenceable by societal functional systems (e.g. politics, economy, production) and how they may affect the design dimensions of local manufacturing is necessary. A systems theory-based analysis is used to consider the influence of the operations of societal subsystems on local manufacturing, to identify decision spaces and to evaluate overarching couplings between the societal system operations.