A Manufacturing Village has intrinsic advantages over individual small businesses. Just the support of Central Services doing the accounting, legal, websites, graphic services, software management, employment, etc. provides lower costs than the individual company can achieve.
A group of 10 manufacturers in a MV gives more political pull than an individual business.
My research sees almost all small businesses I talk with could be better off in a MV.
Some individual companies, after passing throiugh the entrepeur run phase, will need to join a MV.
I haven't seen too many issues for a MV being more competitive agains foreign competition. MV's are built on keeping modern, the best of automation as soon as possible. Some industries, like apparal, are not reacting well to automation and probably best left to lower wage countries.
Keep in mind, production by robots creates wealth in a community just as having wage-earning people on the assembly lines.If the robots work hard and give up all their holidays and bonus pay for working 24 hours a day, the profits the robots create will then show up in taxes instead of wages.