Mass Customization excites both Researchers and Practitioners because of the possibility to produce customized products with mass production efficiency. Mass Customization - An Exploration of European Characteristics gives an overview on the need for personalisation from a customer perspective, analyses Mass Customization theories and assesses relevant best practices of European and International markets. The results of a survey among more than 500 European customers show a declining willingness of customers to compromise on the issue of suitability of products to their personal needs and preferences, the possibility for companies to break brand loyalty and the influence of immediate availability, delivery time and price to the customer's willingness to take part in the co-creation process. Mass Customization has become important to business because of the difficulties of customers to find what they want despite an increase in product variety for many products over the past decades. The emergence of modern technologies in production and communication, however, allows companies to produce customized products without relinquishing economies of scale. With only few companies having taken this promising path, the authors believe that Mass Customization and Mass Customization related marketing strategies will play an essential role in the future and prompt both market leaders and their competitors to offer customization on a large scale for a vast variety of products.

"This book describes original, innovative works on IT systems for mass customization, and provides a multitude of solutions, tools, concepts and successful realizations of IT systems for mass customization. It discusses state-of-the-art mass customization while depicting the importance of IT in making the strategy function efficiently in order to support the business processes required for manufacturing individualized products"--Provided by publisher.

A growing heterogeneity of demand, the advent of ';long tail markets';, exploding product complexities, and the rise of creative consumers are challenging companies in all industries to find new strategies to address these trends. Mass customization (MC) has emerged in the last decade as the premier strategy for companies in all branches of industry to profit from heterogeneity of demand and a broad scope of other customer demands.The research and practical experience collected in this book presents the latest thinking on how to make mass customization work. More than 50 authors from academia and management debate on what is viable now, what did not work in the past, and what lurks just below the radar in mass customization, personalization, and related fields.Edited by two leading authorities in the field of mass customization, both volumes of the book discuss, among many other themes, the latest research and insights on customization strategies, product design for mass customization, virtual models, co-design toolkits, customization value measurement, open source architecture, customization communities, and MC supply chains. Through a number of detailed case studies, prominent examples of mass customization are explained and evaluated in larger context and perspective.

Challenged by the recent economic crisis, the building and construction industry is currently seeking new orientation and strategies. Here mass customisation is uncovered as a key strategy in helping to meet this challenge. The term mass customisation denotes an offering that meets the demands of each individual customer, whilst still being produced with mass production efficiency. Today mass customisation is emerging from a pilot stage into a scalable and sustainable strategy... The first dedicated publication of its kind, this book provides a forum for the concept within an applied and highly innovative context. The book includes contributions from some of the most prominent thinkers and practitioners in the field from across the world, including Kasper S. Vibaek, Steve Kendall, Martin Bechthold, Mitchell M. Tseng, and Masa Noguchi. Bringing together this panel of experts who have carried out research both in academia and practice, this book provides an overview of state-of-the-art practice related to the concept of customisation and personalisation within the built environment.

To adapt to global competitive pressures, manufacturers must develop methods and enabling technologies towards a personalized, customer oriented and sustainable manufacturing. Mass Customization and Sustainability defines the two concepts of mass customization and sustainability and introduces a framework to establish a link between the two concepts to answer the questions: Are these two aspects empowering one another? Or are they hindering one another? These questions investigate mass customization as one of the main driving forces to achieve effective sustainability. A methodology to assess the contribution of mass customization to sustainability is developed, providing an assessment model composed by a set of indicators covering the three aspects of sustainability: social, economical and environmental. This is supported and further explained using ideas and new concepts compiled from recent European research. Researchers, scientists, managers and industry professionals alike can follow a set of practical examples and industrial cases, enabling them to easily transfer Mass Customization and Sustainability theoretical concepts into actions to be enforced into their everyday business for gaining competitiveness. Mass Customization and Sustainability also introduces useful concepts for government officials responsible for establishing sustainable policies and regulations, offering methods to compare the results of implementation of such policies.

Mass Customization: A Supply Chain Approach is a text on the emerging topic of mass customization in manufacturing. The contributed chapters in this book provide a unified treatment to the topic by offering coverage in four main categories - concepts and current state of research; problem solving frameworks, models, and methodologies; supportive techniques and technologies for enabling mass customization; and future research agenda. The book blends theory and practice and includes prototypical applications to illustrate this complex, yet emerging field of inquiry.

What does it mean "to dell?" This newly coined business verb means to mass-customize, making products only in response to actual demand. This allows a product to "go direct" to a customer, and it's what Dell Computer does instead of forcing mass-produced computers on its customers. And Dell's not alone. As Editors Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine point out in their introduction to Markets of One, mass customization is a trend that has caught on among consumer and business-to-business companies alike - think of Levi's jeans, Aramark's hospital services, Select Comfort mattresses, and Peapod or Streamline grocery delivery, to name a few. Companies customize their offerings to meet the unique needs of individual customers so that nearly everyone can obtain exactly what they want at a reasonable price. It's a paradigm shift away from the one-size-fits-all way managers have thought about markets over the past century- today, every individual customer is a market of one. This collection of ten Harvard Business Review articles chronicles the evolution of business competition from mass markets to markets of one-in other words, from creating standardized value through mass production to creating customer-unique value through mass customization. The book examines many of the resulting changes in approach to strategy and operations-for example, moving from pushing products to fulfilling individual needs, from focusing solely on market share to measuring customer share, and from marketing to the masses to cultivating learning relationships with each customer. Markets of One offers the best of the leading thinkers on the topic, exploring both the promise and pitfalls of mass customization. Practical applications are presented with examples of leading companies who successfully mass customize for markets of one. A Harvard Business Review Book