Mass customization, in marketing, manufacturing, and management, is the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output. Those systems combine the low unit costs of mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customization. Wikibooks has more about this subject: Marketing Look up marketing in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Manufacturing, a branch of industry, is the application of tools and a processing medium to the transformation of raw materials into finished goods for sale. ... Look up Management in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Tseng and Jiao define mass customization as "producing goods and services to meet individual customer's needs with near mass production efficiency" (Source: Tseng, M.M., Jiao, J. (2001): Mass Customization, in: Handbook of Industrial Engineering, Technology and Operation Management, 2001, 3rd. ed., p.685; ISBN 0-471-33057-4)

Kaplan and Haenlein define mass customization as "a strategy that creates value by some form of company-customer interaction at the fabrication / assembly stage of the operations level to create customized products with production cost and monetary price similar to those of mass-produced products". (Source: Kaplan, A.M., Haenlein, M.(2006): Toward a parsimonious definition of traditional and electronic mass customization, Journal of Product Innovation Management, 23(2), 168-182.)

Joseph Pine II in his book Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition (ISBN 0-87584-946-6) described this paradigm at the beginning of the 90s. Pine suggested a business model that he called the 8-figure-path which describes the process from invention to mass production to continuous improvement to mass customization and back to invention. The term, however, was coined by Stan Davis.

Pine also describes four types of mass customization (in an article on Harvard Business Review in 1997, co-author by Jim Gilmore):

• Collaborative customization - firms talk to individual customers to determine the precise product offering that best serves the customer's needs (see personalized marketing and personal marketing orientation). This information is then used to specify and manufacture a product that suits that specific customer. For example, some clothing companies will manufacture blue jeans to fit an individual customer.
• Adaptive customization - firms produce a standardized product, but this product is customizable in the hands of the end-user (the customers alter the product themselves)
• 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.
• Cosmetic customization - firms produce a standardized physical product, but market it to different customers in unique ways.

In marketing, a product is anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a want or need (Kotler et al. ... Personalized marketing (also called personalization, and sometimes called one-to-one marketing) is an extreme form of product differentiation. ... Headline text For technical and sociological reasons, marketing has dealt with aggregates like market segments, target markets, and demand. ... Economics and commerce define an end-user as the person who uses a product. ...

Implementation

Many implementations of mass customization are operational today, such as software-based product configurators which make it possible to add and/or change functionalities of a core product or to build fully custom enclosures from scratch. This degree of mass customization has only seen limited adoption, however. If an enterprise's marketing department offers individual products (atomic market fragmentation) it doesn't often mean that a product is produced individually, but rather that similar variants of the same mass produced item are available. Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardised products on production lines. ...

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

Companies in which the production of tangible goods and services is immediately directed by customer demand include: Good (accounting) - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...

• Dell's famous "build-to-order" model facilitated its rise to dominance in the PC direct-purchase industry.
• The Architectural Skylight Company is a Maine firm that uses CAD to automate the production of windows to architects' specifications. (See Architecture week article.)
• Companies throughout the tourism industry have been offering package holiday alternatives through mass customization.
• Most mass customization applications, however, are still in business-to-business industries.

Dell Inc. ... The Altair 8800 was among the first microcomputers to be affordable by an individual, although it initially lacked peripherals and memory. ... Official language(s) None (English de facto; French is also an administrative language) Capital Augusta Largest city Portland Area  Ranked 39th  - Total 33,414 sq mi (86,542 km²)  - Width 210 miles (338 km)  - Length 320 miles (515 km)  - % water 13. ... CAD is a TLA that may stand for: Cadiz Railroad (AAR reporting mark CAD) Canadian dollar – ISO 4217-code Capital Adequacy Directive Card Acceptance Device Children of the Anachronistic Dynasty Computer-aided design Computer-aided detection (medical) Computer-aided diagnosis (medical) Computer-assisted dispatch Computer-assisted drafting Coronary artery disease... It has been suggested that window frames be merged into this article or section. ... An architect at his drawing board, 1893 An architect is a person who is involved in the planning, designing and oversight of a buildings construction. ... Tourists on OÊ»ahu, Hawaii Tourism is travel for predominantly recreational or leisure purposes, and also refers to the provision of services in support of this act. ... A package holiday or package tour consists of transport and accommodation advertised and sold together by a vendor known as a tour operator. ...

Notable failures

Many industries have found that lengthy supply-chains, and the economics of configurability do not allow them to economically offer mass customization. Famously, some of the early businesses attempting mass customization (e.g. in bicycle production) went out of business. In 1999 boosters of the mass customization trend proffered Cannondale as the exemplar of the new model. For instance, a 1999 report [1] touted Cannondale's ability to mass customize: Look up supply in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Economics (deriving from the Greek words οίκω [okos], house, and νέμω [nemo], rules hence household management) is the social science that studies the allocation of scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants. ... “Velo” redirects here. ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... Cannondale is a major American bicycle manufacturer, headquartered in Bethel, Connecticut USA and manufacturing in Bedford, Pennsylvania USA. The company was founded in 1971 by Joe Montgomery to manufacture bicycle trailers for bicycle touring. ...

"Cannondale [...] for example can configure over 8 million different frame and colour variations in its bicycles."

Although the company's subsequent bankruptcy in 2003 was blamed on other causes (including a failed attempt to enter the motorsports market) the mass customization "revolution" certainly failed to save it, and it was dropped as a role model by business gurus. (In some cases, business consultants used the company's business model as an example whilst it was out of business; see "The Dilbert Future" for a satirical attack.) Bankruptcy is a legally declared inability or impairment of ability of an individual or organization to pay their creditors. ... Guru may refer to any of the following: Spirituality: Guru, a spiritual teacher. ... The Dilbert Future hardcover edition front cover The Dilbert Future (1997) is a gloves-off satire of humanity by Scott Adams that breaks the net motivations of humanity down into stupidity, selfishness, and horniness, and presents various ideas for profiting from human nature. ...

Configuration system

The term configuration system is intimately connected with the concept of mass customization. Combining the low unit cost of mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customization requires a deep and utmost efficient integration of customers into value creation activities. Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardised products on production lines. ... Tailoring specifically to an individual. ...

Configurations systems thereby represent the crucial interactive interface between customer and manufacturer, enabling customers to add and/or change functionalities of a core product or making fully custom enclosures from scratch. A poorly developed configuration system will lead to decreased customer satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately resulting in low sales. Mass customization success thus depends largely on the development of an interaction tool – the configuration system.^[1] The user interface is the part of a system exposed to users. ...

See also

• personalized marketing
• product differentiation
• product management
• personal marketing orientation
• manufacturing
• personalization
• Variable Data Printing
• Market customization
• Preorder Economy
• Delayed differentiation (Postponement)

Personalized marketing (also called personalization, and sometimes called one-to-one marketing) is an extreme form of product differentiation. ... In marketing, product differentiation is the modification of a product to make it more attractive to the target market. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Headline text For technical and sociological reasons, marketing has dealt with aggregates like market segments, target markets, and demand. ... Manufacturing, a branch of industry, is the application of tools and a processing medium to the transformation of raw materials into finished goods for sale. ... Personalization is tailoring specifically to one individual. ... Variable Data Printing or VDP (also known as Variable Information Printing, or VIP) is a form of on-demand printing in which elements such as text, graphics and images may be changed from one printed piece to the next without stopping or slowing down the press, using information from a... // “Customize”- to modify (something) according to a customer’s individual requirements[1]. Mass production no longer seems suitable for today’s market and is being replaced by mass customization. ... A preorder economy is a type of proposed future economy where the exact demand for goods is known ahead of time, before any material production takes place. ...

Notes

External links

• http://www.mass-customization.de Mass Customization web site by Frank Piller, MIT and TUM, established in 1995
• http://www.mcrcnottingham.org Mass Customization Research & Resource Centre, Nottingham University, UK
• http://www.madeforone.com/ News about enterprises using mass customization and personalization
• http://www.masscustomhome.com Mass Customisation model for housing by Masa Noguchi, Mackintosh School of Architecture, The Glasgow School of Art