The purpose of this research is to determine whether the implementation of a visual rule authoring mechanism would increase the accuracy and/or consistency of the rules being implemented by conducting a user study. The researchers hypothesised that using the visual method for implementing rules would result in a higher degree of accuracy and consistency among the participants. However, the results showed a decrease in the response accuracy for implementing all of the rules in the system. This is likely due in part to the graphical representation method requiring more training than the standard text-based rule implementation method. The most significant limitation in this study was the difference in familiarity of the participants with their respective rule implementation systems. As a result of this limitation, an additional study was conducted in which a third group of participants were given the same questions, but were provided the visualisations with an extended (five-minute) training period. The results from the third group closely matched the results from the control group that used the spreadsheet-based method. Another major limitation is that both groups of participants implemented the changes by hand rather than through the use of a graphical user interface (GUI) software module, which is how the graphical method could be conducted in a real environment.
Supply chain networks change continuously due to varying objectives, requirements as well as restrictions. The ability of supply chain networks to adapt to changing requirements, especially in fast moving industries, is decisive. As sustainability issues in supply chain management are increasingly concerned among companies, adequate approaches for redesign and replanning considering sustainability become essential. This paper proposes a fuzzy-based approach to support the dynamic design and planning of sustainable supply chain networks from a stakeholder's perspective. An approach is introduced to define and select sustainability measures. In addition, a continuous monitoring of stakeholder requirements, supply chain performance and market trends accounts for the necessity of redesign and replanning. The approach will qualify companies to select sustainability measures to handle rising complexity within sustainable supply chain decision-making context. The findings contribute to the literature on stakeholder management within sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) research.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to find out how consumers constantly trade off the potential extra cost of mass customisation with the additional time they have to wait to receive their customised products. Design/methodology/approach - The authors examine this issue by using conjoint analysis to estimate the trade-offs using a sample of Australian consumers. The authors use cluster analysis to form market segments in the three product categories examined. Findings - The segments demonstrate that there are groups of customers who are quite willing to trade-off price with waiting time. The results have significant implications for Australian manufacturers who are contemplating moving into mass customisation. Originality/value - Many researchers have investigated the issue of a customer's readiness to buy a customised product. In particular, they have examined whether customers are willing to pay extra for a mass-customised product, whether they would spend some time to design it, as well as wait to receive it. There has been no study that has examined all three factors simultaneously. The results of this study can help manufacturers form a better understanding of customer willingness for purchasing mass-customised products.
To enable product configuration of a product family, it is important to develop a model of the selected product family. From such model, a product configurator, in which customers can specify individual products from the family, can be developed. To further utilise the product family model for planning and executing production, the model should be enriched with additional data. The idea is that, when any individual product is specified using the product configurator, a product model can be extracted with all data, necessary for manufacturing planning. In this paper, issues of creating manufacturing structures and related planning data in product family models are presented. Primarily, the more complicated multi-level manufacturing structures are considered and it is argued that the models need to specify other structures for manufacturing compared with the product structure resulting from configuration. Furthermore, the addition of attributes for planning data is addressed.
Construction is traditionally a trade that produces unique, one-off products designed specifically for individual projects via an engineer-to-order process. However, recently developed flexible product platforms based on the theory of mass customisation offer product flexibility with affordable costs. The degree of commonality between products can also be increased by applying the products-in-products concept. This study aims to conceptualise and test theories of mass customisation through modularisation for applications in the construction industry. Three case studies on building and infrastructure construction projects using different specification processes (modify-to-order, configure-to-order and select-variant) are presented. The results show that the products-in-products concept is useful for enabling mass customisation in construction. While select-variant specification is compatible with relatively integral designs, the architecture must have a modular structure to enable modify-to-order or configure-to-order customisation.
Product flexibility is defined as the capability of a product to be redesigned quickly and economically into subsequent product offerings. In this paper, a comprehensive set of design guidelines is created for product flexibility by merging the results of two research studies - a directed patent study of notably flexible products and an empirical product study of consumer products analysed with a product flexibility metric. The guidelines are organised in categories that describe how and under what circumstances they increase flexibility for future evolution. The guidelines are critically evaluated by comparing them to existing literature on closely related topics, including product platforms and mass customisation. Two examples are provided to illustrate how the use of the guidelines can improve a product's flexibility for future evolution.
Agile manufacturing (AM) is a powerful manufacturing paradigm enabling the production of customised products coupled with time compression in a cost effective manner. The selection of best concept design from agility view point involves several criteria and it is a typical multi criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In this study, integrated grey system rough set theory was applied. The computation of grey relational grades enables the selection of best agile concept design. The selected concept design (A3) of the automotive product was further subjected to subsequent phases of agile product development.
Manufacturing execution systems (MES), which allow a continuous flow of information between the systems that are part of the production process, are used in the manufacturing industry among other things as a means to facilitate mass customisation, i.e., a tremendous increase in variety and customisation without a corresponding increase in costs. Using the case of MR-CM®, an MES developed and implemented by the Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen, the function of an MES when put into practice as well as the benefit potential released in this case will be illustrated. Gains in productivity were mainly achieved by reducing setup times, which in turn led to reduced production cost and increased production flexibility. Tool inventories were reduced, and thus also the expenses of capital tied up in tools. Further advantages of MES are increasing production transparency, improved capacity utilisation and process reliability.
While individualised customer demand leads various companies to take a mass customisation approach, organisations also cooperate more closely with their supply chain partners and depend even further on each other. Hence, they are at a higher risk. In order to cope with risks and to ensure mass customisation, flexibility plays a prominent role. Based on an analysis of the relevant literature and an identification of current gaps, this paper presents a method which aims at the integration of supply chain risk and flexibility management in order to enable mass customisation. The proposed method facilitates the management of flexibility within supply chain risk handling. The application of the method is then demonstrated with two case studies focusing on different parts of the same supply chain. They illustrate the considerable importance for aligning flexibility along the mass customisation supply chain.
Adapting product configuration tools to consumers’ needs remains an important factor in mass customisation in the endeavour to avoid confusing and distracting users. To distinguish customers’ information needs we use an important moderating variable from consumer behaviour: involvement. We show in our research in mass customisation settings that it is necessary to differentiate between enduring involvement and situational involvement as the information processing entailed by each is very different. Risk-related situational involvement increases the likelihood of users becoming confused; however enduring involvement might mitigate this effect to some extent and generally tends to reduce confusion. In the light of these findings, we suggest using this knowledge as a criterion for assessing customers’ information needs in a configuration setting, and also propose using type of involvement as an important predictor so that the choice set generated by an integrated recommendation-configuration tool can depend on how likely it is that consumers will become confused.
Engineer-to-order companies have a tremendous product variety compared to mass produced or even mass customised products, implying high costs in both business and production processes. In recent years however some engineer-to-order companies have acknowledged the great potential in applying principles and methods from mass customisation to reduce the cost of variety, including modularisation, product configuration and process automation. This paper presents a case study of applying a statistical method for cost estimation for quotation purposes in an engineer-to-order environment, where cost estimation can be resource intensive and time consuming. The method finds cost critical parameters within a product family. The potential benefits from applying the method includes: simplifying the quotation process and reducing the resources needed to issue a quotation. However, due to the nature of the method consistent data quality and substantial historical data are required.
While implementing the concept of mass customisation, manufacturers in the past mainly focused on ways of fulfilling individual customer needs to enhance product differentiation. This one-sided focus led to a permanent increase in product-related costs due to the growing complexity of the products and their underlying processes. Activities to improve the cost structure of existing mass-customisable products during their market cycle are frequently limited by constraints in product design and process stability. However, examples from best-in-class companies show that an early integration of product cost considerations into the development process offers comprehensive possibilities of significantly limiting the ‘allowed’ level of product costs without losing the potential for differentiation. In this paper, based on our experience from several consulting projects, we demonstrate which design-to-cost approaches leading mass customisers currently undertake to rebut the presumption that customer- and function-relevant features are in contradiction to cost-effective product design.
Today, manufacturing systems are developed as engineered to order (ETO) solutions tailored to produce a specific product or a limited product mix. However, such dedicated systems are not consistent with the current market demands for rapid product changes, high product variety, and customisation. In response, modular manufacturing systems (MMS) are evolving, which are aimed to possess the required responsiveness and to be the manufacturing paradigm of mass customisation (MC). Hereby, MMS brings the development process of manufacturing systems against configured to order (CTO). Up to now, research in MMS has primarily focused on potential benefits, basic principles, and enabling technologies, while the approaches of actually designing and creating modular architectures have received less attention. A potential to fill these gaps by applying MC theories and methods is identified based on the commonalities in the basic modular approaches of MC and MMS. This paper analyses this potential and evaluates it through three conducted cases within the domain of industrial automation and robotics. Based on the results, the paper discusses the prospective to form an MMS design framework by utilising selected MC theories and methods.
Mass customisation (MC) relates to the ability to provide customised products or services through flexible processes in high volumes and at reasonably low costs which are currently key variables for the fashion supply chain. Sustainability concepts – which usually refer to three pillars i.e., economic, environmental and social ones – are new paradigms in this industrial sector, i.e., sustainable mass customisation. The paper proposes a methodological approach for evaluating sustainability performances of a fashion supply chain. Firstly, key performance indicators (KPIs) have been evaluated in order to assess sustainability level of a typical fashion supply chain according to the three single dimensions. KPIs have been derived from social and environmental life cycle analysis (LCA) and the supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model. Then, a multi-criteria model has been developed based on analytical network process (ANP) aiming both to model interrelationships among KPIs and to prioritise them.
One of the key issues in MC is ad hoc logistics for delivering personalised products and components on the just-in-time (JIT) or just-before-time (JBT) basis. The main idea of the proposed approach is to represent the ad hoc multimodal logistics network members by sets of services provided by them. This enables replacing the configuration of the logistics network with that of distributed services. For the purpose of interoperability the services use the common notation described by an application ontology. Depending on the problem considered, the relevant part of the application ontology is selected forming the abstract context that, in turn, is filled with values resulting in the operational context. The operational context represents the constraint satisfaction problem that is used during self-configuration of web-services for problem solving. The application of the context management technology significantly reduces the search space and thus makes it possible to provide for JIT and JBT solutions.
In response to growing global warming issues and increasing energy prices, house-builders today are becoming keener on the delivery of zero energy sustainable homes than ever.Nevertheless, their business operation still tends to develop into routine in view of their close system mode of operation.In 2006, to stimulate the industry, knowledge transfer study visits to Japanese net zero energy cost mass custom housing manufacturers were initiated.The educational event was later called 'Zero-energy Mass Custom Home Mission to Japan' and was resumed in 2007, 2008 and 2010.Consequently, three industry participants were transformed successfully from conventional housing suppliers to early adopters of net zero energy/carbon-emission homebuilders in their local contexts.This study demonstrates the gravity of the mission's execution that was aimed at putting the theory of organisational buying behaviour into practice in order to develop a way to change the nature of the homebuilding industry towards the delivery of zero energy mass custom homes of the future.
This study examined the impact of a Chinese cultural value, relational orientation, on Chinese consumers' responses towards mass customisation of apparel.Relational orientation, which stresses the conformity to group norms, was found to moderate the relationships between mass customisation and several aspects of consumers' perceived value.Specifically, relational orientation negatively affected perceived economic value and enjoyment from apparel mass customisation by Chinese consumers.It also negatively affected the impact of several aspects of perceived value on consumers' behavioural intention towards a marketer.The research suggests the need for differentiated marketing strategies based on consumers' relational orientation when implementing mass customisation of apparel in the People's Republic of China.
Using a large-scale survey in China, this study identifies a set of manufacturing practices based on the framework proposed by Zipkin (2001), and builds and tests a model describing the relationship between mass customisation practices and firm performances.The results demonstrate that the mass customisation practices can bring benefits to manufacturers in terms of both cost reduction and product/service quality improvement, which in turn boost financial performance.Moreover, we find that the practices of elicitation, flexibility in design, advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), just-in-time (JIT) supply chain and integrated logistics information system (ILIS) play different roles in business performance improvement.To be specific, the elicitation and ILIS are very important to operational performance in terms of cost and product/service quality.The flexibility in design and AMT are beneficial to cost reduction only.However, the JIT supply chain has no impact on neither cost nor product/service quality in China.
Most approaches in the field of mass customisation have assumed both a given and a stable product range which is continuously improved, e.g., by gradually adding new variants due to shifts in customer preferences.Curiously, within the field of mass customisation there are no studies that address problems related to new product introduction.Although mass customisation is a hybrid competitive strategy that aims at simultaneously achieving cost and differentiation advantage, we found out that a simultaneous ramp-up strategy for new products and product generations is not always practicable for companies in different industrial sectors, such as automotive and electronic industry.Thus, for a successful product introduction in the area of mass customisation we developed two sequential ramp-up strategies: the high-volume-low-mix (HVLM) strategy and the low-volume-high-mix (LVHM) strategy.Results from an explorative study in different industries produced evidence that our ramp-up strategies present two practicable strategic alternatives for successfully introducing new products in the area of mass customisation.To decide which ramp-up strategy should be used, we define a set of ramp-up specific criteria that are presented in this paper.Subsequently, we discuss some selected recommendations for the implementation of the two ramp-up strategies.
Headquarters and local work units almost always approach change initiatives from different perspectives.This can create substantial challenges for organisation leaders, managers and workers.Principles of mass customisation, along with the latest science, can now be applied to these change initiatives, providing a direct and effective way to maintain the balance between headquarters and local requirements.Recent research and technology advances provide a scientific approach to organisational transformations based on mass customisation.Using this approach, almost any organisation can achieve rapid, repeatable transformational results.
