Mass customization

Prof. Mitchell M. Tseng Industrie Engineering end Engineering Management, HKUST Mass customization, product design and manufacture... 

Product Family Design 692 5. MASS CUSTOMIZATION AND E-COMMERCE 705... 

In reality, customers are often willing to pay premium price for their unique requirements being satisfied, thus giving companies bonus profits (Roberts and Meyer 1991). From an economic perspective, mass customization enables a better match between the producers capabilities and customer needs. This is accomplished through either developing the company s portfolio, which includes prod-... 

The importance of product development for corporate success has been well recognized (Meyer and Utterback 1993 Roberts and Meyer 1991). The effectiveness of a firm s new product generation lies in (1) its ability to create a continuous stream of successful new products over an extended period of time and (2) the attractiveness of these products to the target market niches. Therefore, the essence of mass customization is to maximize such a match of internal capabilities with external market needs. 

In terms of mass customization, a product platform provides the technical basis for catering to customization, managing variety, and leveraging existing capabilities. Essentially, the product platform captures and utilizes reusability underlying product families and serves as a repertoire of knowledge bases for different products. It also prevents variant product proliferation for the same set of customer requirements. TTie formulation of product platform involves inputs from design concepts. 

Design has been considered as a critical factor to the final product form, cost, reliability, and market acceptance. The improvements made to product design may significantly reduce the product cost while causing only a minor increase in the design cost. As a result, it is believed that mass customization can best be approached from design, in particular, the up-front effort in the early stages of the product-development process. 

Figure 4 illustrates the principle of PFA with respect to product family development for mass customization. From the sales point of view, customers are characterized by combinations of functional features, /, and associated feature values, /. A product family, V, V2, V3.V ... 

Competition for mass customization manufacturing is focused on the flexibility and responsiveness in order to satisfy dynamic changes of global markets. The traditional metrics of cost and quality are still necessary conditions for companies to outpace their competitors, but they are no longer the deciding factors between winners and losers. Major trends are ... 

Figure 12 Example of Installation of Mass Customization Manufacturing System at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Manufacturing Practice Mass production Mass customization... 

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