Mass Customization
Mitchell M. Tsenga, S. Jack Hub, Yue Wanga
a: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong
b: University of Michigan, USA
Abstract:
Mass customization aims to deliver customized products with near mass production
efficiency. It has gained much attention from both academia and industry since its
emergence. The paradigm of mass customization is imperative for many companies to
survive in the fragmented, diversified, and competitive marketplace. This survey
gives an introduction to mass customization from the perspectives of design for mass
customization, design for personalization and point out some future directions for the
development of mass customization.
Keywords: Mass customization, personalization, customer requirements
1. Introduction
Mass customization aims to deliver products and services that best meet individual
customers’ needs with near mass production efficiency (Tseng and Jiao 1996). In this
paradigm, it is critical to provide individually designed products and services to every
customer through process agility, flexibility, and integration. A brief summary about
the basic properties that make mass customization unique is summarized as table 1.
Mass Customization
Delivering affordable goods and services
with enough variety and customization
Goal
that nearly everyone finds exactly what
they want
Economies of scope and customer
Economics
integration
Variety and customization through
Focus
flexibility and responsiveness
Product family and standardized modules
Product
assembled based on customer needs
 Upredicatable demand pattern
 Heterogeneous niches
 Low-cost, high-quality, customized
Key Features
goods and services
 Short product development cycles
 Short product life cycles
Organization
Flexible and adaptive
In order to meet the customer
requirements with efficiency and
effectiveness, active customers’
Customer
involvement though out the product life
Involvement
cycle is essential. Thus, user innovation,
co-design, customer configuration
and
others have become important tools in
MC.
Table 1: Properties of mass customization (adapted from Chen et al. 2009)
Mass customization was first coined by Stan Davis in Future Perfect (Davis 1987) and
later developed by Pine (1993), which embarks a paradigm shift for the enterprise that
offers products and services best fitting to individual customer's needs while still
keeping near-mass production efficiency (Tseng and Jiao 2001). The key feature of
mass customization is the capability to integrate the product varieties derived from the
individual customer's needs and desire and the efficiency of mass production, so that
the product is affordable due to low product cost achieved by the production scale of
economy.
The essence of mass customization is to transform a customer to "co-designer", in
which the customer is able to get access to the design process, such as concept design
and product development, by expressing the requirements or even co-designing the
product with the configuration toolkit (Tseng and Piller 2003). Dell's PC
customization service is a typical case.
Mass customization changes the design and production from "made-to-stock" to
"made-to-order". It challenges the conventional product development approaches and
supply chain management, from mass production to "high-variety-low-volume"
production. In order to support the paradigm shift derived by the customization
process, the enterprise should reconsider the whole value chain from the front-end to
balance three important factors, time-to-market, variety, and economy of scale.
In addition, mass customization can also improve inventory and supply chain
management efficiency. As mass customization is a make-to-order process, usually
products are only made when the purchase order is placed. Thus, the shift from
“made-to-stock” to “made-to-order” can significantly improve the production and
supply scheduling and reduce the inventory cost and the risks of investment in
materials and product development that will not encounter the preference of
consumers. Furthermore, mass customization can be conducted online in some cases,
so that many providers even sell shoes completely online without any physical stores,
such as Zappos. This strategy can further reduce the operation and rental costs by
online direct channel sales and increase the profit margin rate (Tseng et al. 2003).
Even for those providers still with physical stores, they no longer have to show a full
inventory of selection in all stores.
2. Design for Customization
Design for mass customization is to consider economics of scope and scale at the
early stage of product development process (Tseng and Jiao 2001). The main
emphasis is on elevating designing individual products to designing a product family
with a common platform, to which modularity and commonality are the foundations.
Based on the variants of the modules, a high number of assembly combinations or
product variants can be created so satisfy the wide range of consumers (Hu et al.
2011). This section will review some of the important steps used to realize mass
customization, namely understanding customer needs, commonality and product
family architecture, and the manufacturing techniques for mass customization.
Understanding customer needs
One crucial step of design for mass customization is to understand individual
customer's needs first. As a "co-designer", the customer can directly interact with the
producer to express the requirements or even directly design the product, usually
through web-based interface. To enhance the interaction with customers, many
companies employ the customer's co-design interface to increase customers'
confidence and educate them about the product, which will transfer the purchasing to
a more enjoyable entertainment (Piller and Tseng 2010; Wang and Tseng 2011b).
Product configurator is among the most widely used toolkits to elicit customer needs.
Basically, a product configurator consists of a set of predefined component or
attributes and constraints on combining this component. It takes customer needs as
input and the output is the desired product variant. Traditional study on product
configurations focuses on the reasoning in configurations, modeling of configuration
knowledge, the reuse of configuration. One trend in current product configuration
research is to incorporate more business intelligence factor into configurators, such as
product recommendation (Freuder et al. 2003; Junker and Mailharro 2003; Juha and
Alexander 2008; Wang and Tseng 2012), customer emerging needs detection (Hauser
and Urban, 2004;Wang and Tseng 2013) and improving the efficiency of eliciting
customer needs (McSherry 2003, Wang and Tseng 2007 and 2011a; Jalali 2012).
Modularity and product family architecture
Customer's needs are then translated into the variant modules, while keeping the rest
constant to achieve economy of scale, leading to modularity and commonality issues
in design for mass customization. Modularity is the decomposition of product
structures and applicable to describing product type, and commonality resembles the
grouping of similar product variants of a specific product type characterized by
modularity (Jiao et al. 2007; Hu et al., 2011). High degree of modularity can address
customer's unique preference, but it increases assembly cost and other related cost as
well. Therefore, there is a balancing point of commonality and modularity.
The commonality and modularity concepts are integrated into product platform-based
development approaches to develop the product family. Product family has been well
recognized as a rationale of achieving mass customization. Product family offers a
systematic diagram which defines product platform, product architecture, and product
family. Product platform is “a set of subsystems and interfaces developed to form a
common structure from which a stream of derivative products can be efficiently
developed and produced” (Meyer et al., 1997). Product architecture is mainly
concerned with how a product is arranged into physical units and how these units
interact (Ulrich et al, 1995). With various adoptions of different product models,
Erens and Verhulst (1997) described the architecture of product families. Fujita and
Ishii (1997) discussed design for variety in terms of structuring essential tasks and
issues associated with variety design. They also tried to optimize the system structure
and the configuration of product families simultaneously (Fujita and Isshii, 1998).
However, their work focuses on computational support instead of product architecture
planning. Tseng and Jiao recognized the rationale of a product family architecture
(PFA) with respect to design for mass customization. They addressed an efficient
method to tailor different products according to different customers’ requirements
based on common product family platform. They also observed the difference
between customer-perceived variety in terms of functionality and technical variety,
which results in different variety design themes.
There are two types of prevailing product family design, scalable product family
design and configurational product family design (Jiao et al, 2006). Simpson first
proposed the scalable approach by using scaling variables to in different dimensions
to satisfy a variety of customer needs (Simpson, 2004). There are two major tasks in
scalable product family design. The first one is to determine the appropriate platform.
It is followed by the step of optimizing common and distinctive variables values to
better satisfy performance and economics requirements. In a nutshell, the scalable
product configuration is to employ scaling variables to shrink or stretch the platform
in various dimensions to satisfy diverse customer needs while other variables are kept
constant. Thus, the important issues are to first decide which variables take common
value in the product family and then determine the optimal value of the common and
distinctive variables in terms of customer needs and design requirements. In modular
product configuration, the product is designed from adding, substituting and/or
removing functional modules.
The other stream of research in product family design is configurational product
family design based on modular product architectures. Thus it is also called
module-based product family design (Ulrich, 1995). The modular product
configuration takes advantage of modular components. The product module involves
a one-to-one mapping from a functional requirement to the physical product feature.
The product infrastructure with the specified decoupled interfaces between
components allows each module to be changed independently. The various modules
can be designed independently to satisfy customer's heterogeneous needs.
Flexible manufacturing for mass customization
As the exponentially increased number of process varieties significantly challenges
production planning and control of conventional manufacturing process (Tian et al.
2008; Terkaj et al. 2009), it is critical to have flexible manufacturing process in mass
customization. From mass customization perspective, two approaches have been
employed to improve the flexibility of a manufacturing process. Manufacturing
process family is one important approach. The concept is to comprise a set of similar
production process for various products to achieve economy of scale by utilizing the
common components and standardized product platform designed within a product
family. Thus, the manufacturer is able to configure the production process with quick
response to product design change, by exploiting the similarity among the product
variety and production process (Colledani et al. 2008).
Manufacturing for mass customization also relies on the availability of flexible
manufacturing system. In addition, the system should be incorporated with the advent
of modern Information and Computer Technology (ICT) as well as the flexible or
reconfigurable manufacturing tools, to reduce the response time from designing a new
product to the production ramp-up (Terkaj et al. 2009). For instance, such system can
produce a new last for shoe production within 5 days since the customized shoe order
is received. The system enables designers to change the CAD model easily with the
limited additional cost. It is equally important that the flexibility in workforce and
production management systems are also key to achieve the seemingly conflicting
goals of mass customization. With more educated human resource, decision to meet
diverse requirements without increasing cost. Likewise, robust production control is
essential to achieve on time delivery with complexity of materials management and
logistics to realize mass customization.
Reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS)
Product variety can be very high under mass customization regime to cope with the
changing product mix and demands. Manufacturing systems for mass customization
need to well address the challenges. Reconfigurable manufacturing systems were
proposed by Koren et al. (1998). An RMS is a system that is designed at the out-set
for rapid changes in its structure and control in order to adjust its production capacity
and functionality within a part family in response to sudden market changes.
Configurations of the manufacturing system play an important role in impacting the
performance of the systems (1999). It should be noted that RMS is different with
flexible manufacturing system in the sense that RMS attempts to increase the
manufacturing’s responsiveness to markets and customers and flexible manufacturing
system aims at increase the variety of part produced. The flexibility of a RMS is
confined within the product family.
Delaying Differentiation
To manage the high uncertainty and variety in manufacturing systems, delayed
product differentiation or postponement strategy is widely used in industry. It refers
that the manufacturing process makes a generic or family product at the beginning
and differentiate into a specific end-product in the later stage when more information
about the demand is obtained. Thus the point where the different products take on
their unique characteristics is postponed. The processes and assemblies are common
up to the point of differentiation. Such delay reduces cost and improves
responsiveness of the assembly systems (Lee and Tang, 1997; Ko and Hu, 2008).
Figure 1(b) illustrates a configuration with differentiation.
Figure 1. Manufacturing system configuration: (a) mixed model assembly, (b)
configuration with differentiation (Hu, 2013)
3. Personalization
Pine initiated the studies of mass customization and personalization and shaped them
into a viable strategy. However in design field, the commonly agreed definition of
personalization and customization has not been achieved yet, and some researchers
use two terms interchangeably. We think that personalization attempts to increase
products’ personal relevance to the individuals. In mass customization, customer
participation is passive and limited. Customers make choices from a set of predefined
offerings, and firms can autonomously produce and deliver products with little or
even no customer participations. Personalization involves proactive customer
participations. Customers collaborate closely with designers to develop products
which satisfy their requirements. Personalization process is considered as consisting
of three main stages (Murthi et al., 2003). In learning stage, firms collect customers’
data and study the data to understand the customers’ preferences and tastes. In
matching stage, firms collaborate with customers and use the knowledge of customers
to develop offerings that can best satisfy customers’ preference and to target these to
appropriate market segment. In evaluation stage, firms evaluate the effectiveness of
learning and matching efforts in providing meaningful personalization to the firm’s
customers. In a nutshell, it is a customer co-creation process and can be considered as
an extension of mass customization. This co-design process is enabled by an open
product architecture (Koren et al., 2013), on-demand manufacturing systems, and
responsive cyber-physical system involving user participation in design, product
simulation/certification, manufacturing, supply and assembly processes that rapidly
meet consumer needs and preferences.
Open architecture products
Product personalization relies on an open product platform, allowing various modules
to be integrated together. Comparing with product family design methodologies mass
customization’s arena which consists of common modules and customized modules, a
personalized product usually has one more personalized modules that allow customers
to create and design. The module is integrated with common modules and customized
modules in the open architecture. All these modules can be easily assembled and
disassembled by applying the standard mechanical, electrical and informational
interfaces. Product design may contain partial or all of the three types of modules due
to the consideration of anticipated value, manufacturability and cost of the product.
Product architecting aims at determining the modules structure of common,
customizable and personalizable modules depending on cost and manufacturability
(Berry, 2012).
On-demand manufacturing systems
To increase the responsiveness to customer demands, it is critical for manufacturing
system to fabricating personalized product features and modules and assembling these
modules with other manufacturer supplied modules flexibly. Additive manufacturing
has been considered as an enabling technology towards personalization (Savitz, 2012).
It can create 3D solid objects directly from a CAD model cost-effectively. In addition,
a cost effective on-demand assembly system should be able to configure and
reconfigure product in response to customers’ personalized designs.
Cyber-physical systems
Cyber-Physical Systems refer to engineered systems that are built from and depend
upon the synergy of computational and physical components (NSF report, 2012). To
support the distributed personalization design collaboration and on-demand
manufacturing, it is necessary to integrate computational tools with the physical
design and manufacturing systems. The development of new user interface methods
and tools for personalized production will be critical to support the scalable user
experience and collaborative, distributed design approaches. Considering users may
share and view the design with likeminded people, we can leverage on existing
cyber-social networking infrastructures to support these users. Methodology to
identify emerging customer needs will be needed to address the potential business
opportunity of new market and new product development.
4. Future direction of mass customization
Defining customer requirement is the key to customization. Customer participation in
the design process has shown to be the most promising way of getting the
requirements efficiently and effectively. Currently the whole process was mainly
controlled by the designer and the product was finally manufactured and delivered by
the producer. However, with the new interactive computing technology, it is possible
for consumers to control and dominate the process in virtual environment. Thus, the
role of the designer will be shifted to product platforms with sufficient supports to
assist the process. It means that the product can be customized at any time when the
consumer thinks it is necessary to do so, even after the product has been purchased.
Such freedom would offer significant opportunities for consumers to dynamically
adapt the product for their new needs as well as reflecting their identity and efficacy
through the creative design and modifications, throughout the lifespan of the product.
Customers become more connected. Products and services are increasingly knitted to
a larger ecosystem of interacting objects. A product ecosystem can be considered as a
dynamic unit that consists of all products and users, functioning together with its
surrounding ambience, as well as their interactive relations and business processes.
Looking at the whole sum of interacting objects and understanding the flow patterns
of the ecosystem are for the future of mass customization.
Furthermore, technologies may change the delivery of the physical goods. For
example, 3D printing technology may significantly stimulate the development of new
MC. Recent reports in Economist demonstrate the potential of 3D printing and
manufacturing changing the world. It is the manufacturing flexibility that constrained
consumers within a limited freedom to customize. Given time, consumers will be able
to really produce some physical components with machining systems. Thus,
consumers can participate in the assembly of physical components. On the other hand,
in order to achieve the production efficiency, the provider has to rely on product
family concept to keep balance between the component commonality and variety. The
product modularity and platform will still be needed to navigate usage to describe
their requirements. With technology, the consumer would feel free to produce any
component, or even a whole product, as they want.
Looking forward, with the entry barrier reduced in both customer requirements
acquisition at the front end and product delivery at the back end, we can thus
extrapolate mass customization to open customization, along with the similar
concepts as open system and open innovation. Open customization, still a working
definition, is a paradigm that motivates people to participate, to create, to learn, to
acquire, and to recover in providing goods and services to fulfill individual needs, not
only products, but also the process of producing, with fair competition.
5. Conclusion and outlook
Mass customization defies the contradiction between mass and customization and
aims to deliver products and services that best meet individual customers’ needs with
near mass production efficiency. A novel and ambitious concept as it is, mass
customization is also exposed to various conflicts, both strategically and operationally.
Striving to serve diverse customer needs by precisely meeting customer needs is the
main goal of production. It is important for being thieving in a competitive world but
also reduce waste and delays. This should start with improving customer connection
such as acquire customers requirement quickly and accurately. For design and
manufacturing, connecting the entire product life cycle to achieve scale of economy
across product families and generations are essential for cost effectiveness. Thus,
commonality in product design, processes, delivery, service and sustainability is
essential.
In summary, Mass Customization addresses basic issues of production systems across
product design, marketing, manufacturing, sale, service to remanufacturing. It will
continue to be a main thrust in both theory and practice.
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