Mass customization

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Mass customization makes use of flexible computer-aided systems to produce custom products. Such systems combine the low unit costs of mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customization.

Mass customization is the new frontier in business for both manufacturing and service industries. At its core, is a tremendous increase in variety and customization without a corresponding increase in costs. At its limit, it is the mass production of individually customized goods and services. At its best, it provides strategic advantage and economic value.^[1]

Product design strategy

Mass customization is a product design strategy and is currently used with both delayed differentiation and modular design to enhance the value delivered to customers.^[2]

Mass customization is the method of, "effectively postponing the task of differentiating a product for a specific customer until the latest possible point in the supply network".^[3]

From collaborative engineering perspective, mass customization can be viewed as collaborative efforts between customers and manufacturers, who have different sets of priorities and need to jointly search for solutions that best match customers' individual specific needs with manufacturers' customization capabilities.^[4]

History

The concept of mass customization is attributed to Stan Davis in Future Perfect,^[5] and was defined by Tseng & Jiao (2001, p. 685) as "producing goods and services to meet individual customers' needs with near mass production efficiency". Kaplan & Haenlein (2006) concurred, calling it "a strategy that creates value by some form of company-customer interaction at the fabrication and assembly stage of the operations level to create customized products with production cost and monetary price similar to those of mass-produced products". Similarly, McCarthy (2004, p. 348) highlights that mass customization involves balancing operational drivers by defining it as, "the capability to manufacture a relatively high volume of product options for a relatively large market (or collection of niche markets) that demands customization, without tradeoffs in cost, delivery and quality".

Implementation

Many implementations of mass customization are operational today, such as

Companies that have succeeded with mass-customization business models tend to supply purely electronic products.[7] However, these are not true "mass customizers" in the original sense, since they do not offer an alternative to mass production of material goods.

Variants

Pine (1993) described four types of mass customization:

• Collaborative customization (also considered
  Converse
  lets consumers chose the color or pattern of every element of certain types of shoes, either in-store or online.
• Adaptive customization – Firms produce a standardized product, but this product is customizable in the hands of the
  Lutron lights, which are programmable so that customers can easily customize the aesthetic effect.^[8]
• Transparent customization – Firms provide individual customers with unique products, without explicitly telling them that the products are customized. In this case there is a need to accurately assess customer needs. Example: Google
  AdSense
• Cosmetic customization – Firms produce a standardized physical product, but market it to different customers in unique ways. Example: Soft Drink served in: A can, 1.25L bottle, 2L bottle.^[clarification needed]

He suggested a business model, "the 8.5-figure-path", a process going from

Market research

Kamis, Koufaris and Stern (2008) conducted experiments to test the impacts of mass customization when postponed to the stage of retail, online shopping. They found that users perceive greater usefulness and enjoyment with a mass customization interface vs. a more typical shopping interface, particularly in a task of moderate complexity.^[9]

See also

• Configurator
• Dell
• Industry 4.0
• Knowledge-based configuration
• Long tail
• Mail merge
• Manufacturing
• Personalization
• Personalized marketing
• Product differentiation
• Product management
• Prosumer
• Rapid manufacturing
• Responsive computer-aided design
• Structure chart
• Variable data printing

References