Placement prospects of the business in terms of pandemic threats

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that global production chains significantly reduce the security of states and companies: in the face of problems with the movement of goods and people, there have been disruptions in the supply of goods. States and companies should influence the location of safety-critical businesses by limiting their acceptable space. This means the need to form a list of businesses that are important to the security of the state or company and are sensitive to pandemic threats, as well as the need to establish acceptable placement for such businesses. To assess the prospects of business placement in terms of pandemic threats, it is necessary to improve theoretical approaches to the study of factors of business placement. On this basis, it is possible to conduct a qualitative study of pandemic threats as factors in the placement of businesses and to develop recommendations for states and companies to limit the space for the acceptable placement of relevant businesses. Design/methodology/approach: Morphological analysis is used as the main research method. Findings: It is advisable to divide the business placement factors into internal factors, which are generated by the "business" side and external generated by the "place" side, as well as for the past, present and future. Internal and external factors of business placement form complementary pairs of factors, which are characterized by the strength of the impact, as well as the possibility of artificial creation, cost and duration. Originality/value: Business placement factors need to be investigated over time, for which it is advisable to use the term PPF-research (past-present-future-research). Pandemic threats were in the past, are now and, with a high probability, will be factors in the placement of many types of business in the future. Business placement under the influence of pandemic threat factors in targeting sales markets sharply increases the attractiveness of production using 3D printing technologies, the widespread and continuous improvement of which should become one of the priorities of the innovation policy of states and companies in Europe.