Abstract
Satisfying customer needs becomes increasingly complex when a product customization element is included. This paper presents a case of transforming manufacturing system, as a part of implementing mass customization strategy in the panel furniture manufacturing company. The need for the effective implementation of customization strategy shows that shop-floor reconfiguration is necessary, in order to produce what customer wants at low costs and on a timely manner. One way for achieving this is to implement group technology approach, by creating product and machine groups and simplifying material flows. The aim of the presented study is to show an application of production flow analysis in the process of converting the mass production company to the mass customization system. The paper presents benefits of synergy created by using group technology and production flow analysis in enabling mass customized production.
Highlights
With an increased range of products offered on the global market, customers have an opportunity to choose what they want and even creating and designing their own products
Once exclusivity, offered only to buyers of luxury products, product customization today comes to a wider range of customers with an approach known as mass customization
In order to organize production system to be suitable for the implementation of mass customization strategy, a company should consider issues related to optimizing the way the products are created
Summary
With an increased range of products offered on the global market, customers have an opportunity to choose what they want and even creating and designing their own products. Dealing with new market trends and an emergence of “markets of one” [2], production companies today must take mass customization into account in order to stay competitive. In order to organize production system to be suitable for the implementation of mass customization strategy, a company should consider issues related to optimizing the way the products are created. The research conducted in this paper represents an effort towards successful implementation of mass customization strategy into the furniture industry company. In order to achieve this goal, the application of group technology (GT) and production flow analysis (PFA) has been proposed. The first part of the paper brings the literature overview of mass customization and production flow analysis approach.
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