Mass Customization Strategy Research Articles

웹 미디어에 나타난 커스터마이저블 패션 브랜드의 유형 및 전략 연구

The purpose of this study is to analyze fashion brands' contents and characteristics of the participation platform of users, to assess the types and strategies of mass customization(MC). Most fashion brands sell one professional content: Shoes brands were the most common, followed by bags, unisex wear, and menswear. In consumer's design selection elements, changes in color and materials were the most common. For the personalization service elements, monogram service was the most common. The results of MC types analysis were as follows, Customized Standardization was the most common, followed by Tailored Customization, Pure Customization, and Segmented Standardization. For the types according to changes in products and expression methods, Cosmetic was the most common. And the classification according to modulation, Modularizers were the most common. For Creativity, brands in the making stage were the most common. For Flexibility, although brands different methods, high flexibility by modularizing design elements of products and accomplishing various design through participation. The Ease of use for various expression was generally high, parallel to Flexibility. For Durability, because consumers could receive end products only when they participated in the assembly stage in the on-line purchase, their continuous participation was not possible, so they participated only once. The typical types and strategy of MC were analyzed. The Customized Standardization type was the most common in shoes, bag, and womenswear brands. It was the Cosmetic type which could change colors and materials, the Modularizers, and had high Flexibility and Ease of use and low Durability.

A method for product platform planning based on pruning analysis and attribute matching

Product platform planning can greatly support product variant design, which is of great help to the implementation of mass customization (MC). In most of product platform planning methods, product modules and product families have been usually preplanned before products are designed, which would not make full use of the existing product resources. In this paper, we propose a method for product platform planning using the existing product data in product lifecycle management (PLM) database. The proposed method introduces two key technologies, i.e., pruning analysis and attribute matching. The pruning analysis is used to find out the sharing parts of different product families, which constitutes the basic framework of product platform; the attribute matching is used to classify product modules into different categories according to their sharing degrees, which reveals the relationships of different product modules and forms the association rules of product platform. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by the product data in the PLM database of a valve company. The proposed method greatly improves the reuse rate of existing product resources, providing an effective and fast way for enterprises to implement the MC strategy.

Systematic Consideration of Value Chains with Respect to the Timing of Individualization

Increasing variety of customer requirements and product variants lead to extended complexity in development and manufacturing. Especially the management of development and manufacturing with respect to customer specific and individualized products becomes more and more challenging. However, the issue of customer specific and individualized products is often reduced to the strategy of mass customization. The complexity of this topic requires a holistic approach in order to structure and analyze individualization along the entire value chain. Only if such an understanding is created, the issue of individualization can be addressed adequately to meet the increasing flexibility requirements and growing complexity. For this reason, a systematic classification has to be developed to understand the characteristics of and the options for individualization as well as to enable its applicability. Nevertheless, existing approaches are often incomplete and superficial. Furthermore, many terms in the context of individualization are neither defined nor used consistently. Consequently, the aim of this work is to create an overarching systematization that closes the gaps in existing approaches and provides unambiguous terms. Furthermore, this approach should holistically visualize individualization and illustrate its impact to the core value chains in manufacturing industries.

VR-based Product Personalization Process for Smart Products

Through the synergies of advanced IT technologies in sensor network and hardware infrastructure, both industrial and consumer products are evolving rapidly to carry more smart features. To sharpen competitive edge in global market, manufacturers today ought to enable their customers to personalize their products to meet diversifying customer needs (CNs). However, the increasing complexity of smart product is dramatically expanding the design space due to over-loaded smart features, which results in significant challenges in the personalization of smart products. Typically, manufacturers operating in a configure-to-order (CTO) manner would adopt a mass customization strategy and implement it with a product configuration system (also known as product configurator). The user experience (UX) of personalizing products by conducting product configuration is crucial for encouraging customer retention and loyalty. This project studied the product personalization process for smart products by observing a group of customers conducting a series of product configuration tasks in several types of product configurators we developed for different platforms (web-based and Virtual Reality (VR) based version). By analyzing mental and physical reaction of the customer, a more systematic understanding of user preference has been attained. The proposed VR-based approach for realizing customer-centric product personalization has been proved to be valid and should be a valuable reference in the future development of the product configuration system.

Tecnologia de informação e customização em massa: evidências na indústria de transformação

Estratégia de customização em massa pode ser entendida como o conjunto de planos que irá servir de referência para a tomada de decisões, no sentido de satisfazer às necessidades individuais dos clientes, por meio da rápida disponibilização de bens e serviços, a custos baixos e em grande escala. O objetivo deste artigo é analisar como a tecnologia de informação está sendo utilizada para habilitar a adoção da customização em massa. A estratégia de pesquisa adotada foi de estudo de casos múltiplos, empreendido em sete empresas pertencentes a diferentes setores da indústria de transformação. Entrevistas semiestruturadas foram adotadas como principal técnica para coleta de dados. A análise de dados ocorreu em dois estágios: análise individual e análise cruzada dos casos. Os resultados permitiram constatar que o uso da tecnologia de informação nos processos das empresas que customizam seus produtos em massa não se dá de maneira uniforme. Seu grau de utilização depende, principalmente, do estágio na cadeia de valor onde ocorre a customização e do modelo adotado para venda dos produtos e interação com os clientes. A pesquisa permitiu concluir que a interação e o acompanhamento do cliente, a busca pela flexibilidade nos processos produtivos, a maximização do projeto colaborativo e, em menor grau de utilização, a integração entre os elos da cadeia de suprimentos, são elementos suportados pela tecnologia de informação para a implementação da customização em massa.

Investigação do uso da customização em massa no vestuário

This study aims to understand how mass customization strategy is being used in the garment industry and investigate four methods: questionnaire, consumer journey, storyboard and mini-survey in the user data collected to develop a proposal for customization model. From these methods it was possible to get the necessary information to define the customization model by mass for the profile of the studied company.

Smart Product Design and Production Control for Effective Mass Customization in the Industry 4.0 Concept

Abstract The paper presents a general concept of smart design and production control as key elements for efficient operation of a smart factory. The authors present various techniques that aid the design process of individualized products and organization of their production in the context of realization of the mass customization strategy, which allows a shortened time of development for a new product. Particular attention was paid to integration of additive manufacturing technologies and virtual reality techniques, which are a base of the so-called hybrid prototyping.

Strategies For Mass Customization

Mass customization allows firms to produce only things their customers want (or produce after they have orders in hand). This approach, make-to-order, brings many benefits to firms in terms of cost and profit because of lower inventory levels, maximum sales, elimination of material waste, flexible production and, most of all, customer satisfaction. However, mass customization may not be the panacea for all organizations. While some companies are very successful with mass customization, others are not. This paper illustrates that mass customization strategies depend on an understanding of the conditions in each industry.

Research on Collaborative Design Method for Apparel Mass Customization in the Internet Plus Era

The growing accessibility of internet service, especially in the Internet Plus era, supported mass customization in the apparel industry. As mass customization emphasize on providing individually-designed products and services to meet every customer requirement, the advanced Internet-based service systems help achieve high process flexibility and integration. In this paper, we studied the triangle relations among consumer, brands’ designer, and manufacturer in collaborative design process in apparel mass-customized product development. As well as explained the advanced technologies enabling collaborative design process, such as toolkits for co-design, 3D body scanning, and CAD systems. We finally gave three feasible recommendations for apparel industry to apply mass customization strategy.

Embeddedness and path dependence of organizational capabilities for mass customization and green management: A longitudinal case study in the machinery industry

A growing number of firms today have to cope with the twofold challenge of mass customization (i.e., combining high performance in product customization with high performance in cost, delivery and quality) and green management (i.e., integrating environmental-sustainability principles into businesses). Research on this joint challenge, however, is still limited in the literature. To narrow this gap, we empirically investigate the interconnectedness of mass customization and green management on the level of their enabling capabilities. Through a single longitudinal case study in a machinery manufacturing organization that, during the period of observation, succeeded in developing both mass-customization capabilities and green-management capabilities, we find overlaps and path dependences between such capabilities. Pragmatically, these findings indicate synergies that firms pursuing a green mass customization strategy may leverage in order to alleviate the difficulty of implementing that strategy. From an academic standpoint, these findings contribute to the debate on the relationship between the environmental pillar of sustainability and its economic pillar and, at the same time, add both to the body of the literature on mass customization and to the one on green management. Limitations of the present study and the related opportunities for future research are, finally, discussed.

Mass Customization and Guardrails: 'You Can't Be All Things to All People'

A mass customization (“customer as designer”) strategy enables a firm to yield a closer match between its products and customer tastes. A mismatch between those tastes and the delivered product implies a cost to the consumer. Rather than assume all products, other than the one purchased, are immaterial to the customer, we consider the brand-level issue of mismatch between customers’ tastes and the firm’s full range of products. To this end, we permit consumers’ utility to depend upon the distance between their ideal point and the limits of the firm’s product varieties, which we refer to as guardrail products. Mass customization can thus reduce product-specific “fit” costs yet exacerbate brand-level fit. In the absence of brand-level costs, the firm extracts maximal revenue from consumers by offering a range of varieties to cover all possible consumer tastes at a uniform price We show that considering a brand level cost implies that the firm should limit the breadth of the mass customization region to be less than full market coverage. More interestingly, we also find that the firm should optimally implement a differential pricing scheme for those product varieties at the outer extremes of its product line, catering to those consumers with more extreme tastes. Given that a continuum of prices will likely not be practical in application, we also consider the more pragmatic approach of a set of fixed (non-customized) products to serve customers at the taste extremes, with a corresponding set of (lower) fixed prices. We prove this heuristic solution performs close to optimal.

Differentiation and customer decoupling points: An integrated design approach for mass customization

Mass customization draws a twofold benefit: cost reduction, inherited from mass production techniques, and good response to customer requirements, inherited from customization. Two main decisions, relevant to design and manufacturing, are required for the proper implementation of mass customization. First, product features should be split between standard and customizable ones. This will position the product differentiation points. Second, processes should be split between make-to-stock and make-to-order. This will position the customer-order decoupling point. Most often, these two decisions are made separately. In this article, the authors advocate that both decisions should be made simultaneously. They propose an integrated method for design for mass customization. It is based on simultaneously evaluating the impact of these two criteria on enterprise and customer value through the modeling and simulation of value networks. A real case study on Alpina footwear industries is simulated and analyzed. The computational results highlight the joint impact of the two decisions on the overall performance. These two levers should then be considered, simultaneously, when designing the mass customization strategy.

Exploring the “mid office” concept as an enabler of mass customization in services

Purpose– Mass customization (MC) is a well-established strategy for providing high levels of customization while achieving the scale economies of high volume production. The purpose of this paper is to explore a new service design configuration, the “mid office,” as a service interface which may support front office customization capabilities while protecting the back office from disruption. The authors posit that it may facilitate MC by enabling product/service and organizational modularity.Design/methodology/approach– The research is based on a single case study of a large European bank’s payment services, traditionally high volume, low variety operations. The bank adopted a MC strategy which involved the creation of a mid office. The analysis spans product/service and organizational design.Findings– When combined with menu-driven customization and reuse modularization, the mid office appears to support partial rather than full MC. It facilitates postponement of customization to the assembly stage through service coproduction, organizational decoupling, and the streamlining of employee adaptive behaviors.Research limitations/implications– The study bears the limitations typical of case study research; however this was appropriate given the exploratory nature of the research into a nascent concept.Practical implications– The paper identifies a series of design decisions to enable practitioners to choose between full and partial service MC, ensuring design coherence through a mirror effect of service modularity and organizational modularity.Originality/value– It is argued that the mid office is a service interface which facilitates partial MC by enabling service and organizational modularity. The paper reinterprets the archetypes of full and partial MC in service terms, and proposes a contingent approach to service MC implementation based on service value.

Process configuration based on generative constraint satisfaction problem

Product configuration, a widely used technology in product family design, is one of the most effective technologies of mass customization strategies which have been deployed by many companies for years. Nevertheless, the mass customization needs to cover the management of the whole customizable product cycle. In order to assist the development of mass customization, it is essential to extend the configuration technology to product family process planning, which is the technological essence of process configuration. In this article the process configuration task is confirmed based on the analysis of characteristics of process planning. Compared with the solving scheme of product configuration, the process configuration is then mapped into a generative constraint satisfaction problem (GCSP), and the variables and constraints of the process configuration GCSP model are identified respectively. An algorithm based on backtracking algorithm is introduced to complete the process configuration. Finally, an experiment on machining process configuration for satellite plate panel verifies the validity of our algorithm.

Selection of the Most Suitable Statistical Process Control Approach for Short Production Runs: A Decision-Model

DOI: 10.7763/IJIET.2015.V5.521  Abstract—Nowadays, customers are increasingly claiming not only for better quality products at the lowest possible cost, but also demanding customized solutions to satisfy their specific, sometimes unique, needs and wants. Due to this, manufacturing companies are seeking to adopt higher agile production models, such as mass customization strategies. In the quality control field, statistical process control (SPC) methods have been widely used to monitor process performance and detect abnormal situations in its behavior; however, traditional SPC approaches are usually not appropriate for small lot or batch sizes, for the start-up of a process, and for situations where a high variety of mixed products exist. Such situations are within the scope of the so called short production runs. Several SPC schemes have been proposed for short-run environments; all of them have their own advantages, shortcomings, and more suitable for certain production scenarios. This paper provides an up-to-date literature review on the topic, identifies classes of SPC short-run methods, and presents a decision-model that guides production managers in the choice of the most appropriate SPC short-run approach. The model was validated in a textile production company, and is being incorporated into a software package.

The Influence of Mass Customization Strategy on Configuration Complexity of Assembly Systems

In current business environment many OEM companies are employing mass customization strategy, which has implication on the entire operations of an enterprise and especially influences the character of assembly processes. Increased product differentiation in context of customized production causes significant changes in complexity of assembly systems. Our focus in this paper is the development of methodological framework for generating all possible product configurations based on number of stable and optional components or modules from which a final product is completed. Subsequently, we propose an approach to determining so called product configuration complexity by specifying classes and sub-classes of product configurations. Then, for each sub-class of product configuration we can obtain upper bounds values of configuration complexity. Finally, configuration complexity scale based on the obtain upper bounds values is outlined and discussed.

Product Configurations in Terms of Mass Customized Assembly Systems

In current production and business environment many Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) apply strategy of mass customization (MC). They do so in order to draw the attention of potential customers, by offering a high level of product customization. The product differentiation in context of mass-customized production (MCP) brings massive changes into facility operations, fundamentally influences the character and substance of assembly processes which causes significant changes in assembly complexity. This paper firstly presents a methodological framework for generation of product configurations depending on the composition and number of initial assembly components, subsequently, a procedure for assessment of configuration complexity is proposed. The presented methodological framework is further applied on a specific model of customized assembly of washing machines where the configuration complexity is further compared with generally applicable Shannon`s (entropic) structural complexity.

Contextual variety, Internet-of-Things and the choice of tailoring over platform: Mass customisation strategy in supply chain management

This paper considers the implications for Supply Chain Management (SCM) from the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) or Internet Connected Objects (ICO). We focus on opportunities and challenges stemming from consumption data that comes from ICO, and on how this data can be mapped onto strategic choices of product variety. We develop a simple analytical framework that illustrates the underlying mechanisms of a product supplier/producer׳s choice between (i) producing multiple product varieties as a way of meeting consumer demand (a “tailoring strategy”), and (ii) offering a flexible and standardised platform which enables consumers׳ needs to be met by incorporating personal ICO data into various customisable applications (a “platform strategy”). Under a platform strategy, the ICO data is independently produced by other providers and can be called on in both use and context of use. We derive conditions under which each of the strategies may be profitable for the provider through maximising consumers’ value. Our findings are that the higher the demand for contextual variety, the more profitable the platform strategy becomes, relative to the tailoring strategy. Our study concludes by considering the implications for SCM research and practice with an extension to postponement taxonomies, including those where the customer, and not the supplier, is the completer of the product, and we show that this yields higher profits than the tailoring strategy.

Patient credentialing as a population health management strategy: a diabetes case study.

When given the opportunity to become actively involved in the decision-making process, patients can positively impact their health outcomes. Understanding how to empower patients to become informed consumers of health care services is an important strategy for addressing disparities and variability in care. Patient credentialing identifies people who have a certain diagnosis and have achieved certain levels of competency in understanding and managing their disease. Patient credentialing was developed to meet 3 core purposes: (1) enhance patient engagement by increasing personal accountability for health outcomes, (2) create a mass customization strategy for providers to deliver high-quality, patient-centered collaborative care, and (3) provide payers with a foundation for properly aligning health benefit incentives. The Patient Self-Management Credential for Diabetes, a first-of-its-kind, psychometrically validated tool, has been deployed within 3 practice-based research initiatives as a component of innovative diabetes care. Results from these projects show improved clinical outcomes, reduced health care costs, and a relationship between credential achievement levels and clinical markers of diabetes. Implementing patient credentialing as part of collaborative care delivered within various settings across the health care system may be an effective way to reduce disparities, improve access to care and appropriate treatments, incentivize patient engagement in managing their health, and expend time and resources in a customized way to meet individual needs.

New product development for mass customization: a systematic review

The incorporation of tools into New Product Development (NPD) process tends to contribute to the implementation of Mass Customization strategy in companies. Different knowledge areas – such as marketing, design and engineering – offer tools for different stages of product development. The specificity of those tools makes their selection and application to NPD process difficult. This paper aims at carrying out a literature review of applicable tools in respect to the NPD aimed at MC promotion. It also aims at identifying, according to its objective, its localization and application to NPD process. By means of a systematic review, 39 tools for NPD were identified. The results present bibliometrics on the tools, identify four tool clusters according to their contributions to product development, and also identify opportunities for research about the theme.