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Mass customization
 
 
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Mass customization, in marketing
Marketing

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large....
, manufacturing
Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machine, tool and labor to make things for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to Industry production, in which raw material are transformed into finished good on a large scale....
, and management
Management

Management in business and human organization activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leadership or directing, and Control an organization or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal....
, is the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output. Those systems combine the low unit costs of mass production
Mass production

Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines. The concepts of mass production are applied to various kinds of products, from fluids and particulates handled in bulk to discrete solid parts to assemblies of such parts ....
 processes with the flexibility of individual customization.

"Mass Customization" is the new frontier in business competition for both manufacturing and service industries. At its core is a tremendous increase in variety and customization without a corresponding increase in costs.






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Mass customization, in marketing
Marketing

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large....
, manufacturing
Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machine, tool and labor to make things for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to Industry production, in which raw material are transformed into finished good on a large scale....
, and management
Management

Management in business and human organization activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leadership or directing, and Control an organization or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal....
, is the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output. Those systems combine the low unit costs of mass production
Mass production

Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines. The concepts of mass production are applied to various kinds of products, from fluids and particulates handled in bulk to discrete solid parts to assemblies of such parts ....
 processes with the flexibility of individual customization.

"Mass Customization" is the new frontier in business competition for both manufacturing and service industries. At its core is a tremendous increase in variety and customization without a corresponding increase in costs. At its limit, it is the mass production of individually customized goods and services. At its best, it provides strategic advantage and economic value.”

The concept of mass customization is attributed to Stan Davis in Future Perfect and was defined by as "producing goods and services to meet individual customer's needs with near mass production efficiency". Andreas Kaplan
Andreas Kaplan

Andreas M. Kaplan, Professor of Marketing, is permanent faculty member at the ESCP-EAP European School of Management where he teaches Advertising and Media management as well as International marketing....
 and Michael Haenlein concurred, calling it "a strategy that creates value by some form of company-customer interaction at the fabrication and assembly stage of the operations level to create customized products with production cost and monetary price similar to those of mass-produced products".

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.

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.

Variants

described four types of mass customization:
  • Not a Collaborative customization -firms talk to individual customers to determine the precise product offering
    Product (business)

    The noun product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce from the Latin produce, lead or bring forth....
     that best serves the customer's needs (see personalized marketing
    Personalized marketing

    Personalized marketing is an extreme form of product differentiation. Whereas product differentiation tries to differentiate a product from competing ones, personalization tries to make a unique product for each customer....
     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
    End-user

    Economics and commerce define an end-user as the person who uses a Product . The end-user or consumer may differ from the person who purchases the product....
     (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.


He suggested a business model, "the 8.5-figure-path", a process going from invention
Invention

An invention is the creation of a new configuration, composition of matter, device, or process. Some inventions are based on pre-existing models or ideas....
 to mass production to continuous improvement to mass customization and back to invention.

See also

  • Custom-Fit
    Custom-Fit

    Customization is a broad term which could be defined as tailor-made. To this respect, mass customization could be defined as a massive personalization or personalization for everybody....
  • Dell
    Dell

    Dell, Inc. is a multinational corporation technology corporation that develops, manufactures, sells, and supports personal computers and other computer-related products....
  • Manufacturing
    Manufacturing

    Manufacturing is the use of machine, tool and labor to make things for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to Industry production, in which raw material are transformed into finished good on a large scale....
  • Market customization
    Market customization

    Market Customization ?Customize?? to modify according to a customer?s individual requirements.Micro Marketing include, segment, niche, local and custom....
  • Personal marketing orientation
  • Personalization
    Personalization

    Personalization or personalisation is tailoring a consumer product, electronic or written medium to a user based on personal details or characteristics they provide....
  • Personalized marketing
    Personalized marketing

    Personalized marketing is an extreme form of product differentiation. Whereas product differentiation tries to differentiate a product from competing ones, personalization tries to make a unique product for each customer....
  • Product differentiation
    Product differentiation

    In marketing, product differentiation is the process of distinguishing the differences of a product or offering from others, to make it more attractive to a particular target market....
  • Product management
    Product management

    Product management is an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle....
  • Rapid manufacturing
    Rapid manufacturing

    Rapid manufacturing is an additive fabrication technique for manufacturing solid objects by the sequential delivery of energy and/or material to specified points in space to produce that part....
  • Structure chart
    Structure chart

    File:Structured Chart Example.jpgA Structure Chart in software engineering and organizational theory is a chart, that shows the breakdown of the configuration system to the lowest manageable levels....
  • The Long Tail
    The Long Tail

    The phrase The Long Tail was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe the niche strategy of businesses, such as Amazon.com or Netflix, that sell a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities....
  • Variable Data Printing
    Variable Data Printing

    Variable-data printing is a form of on-demand printing in which elements such as Writing, graphics and may be changed from one printed piece to the next, without stopping or slowing down the printing process and using information from a database or external file....


External links

Central Europe Mass Customization Research Center, by Maciej Piotrowski and Robert Freund Research on a mass custom design approach to sustainable housing at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, The Glasgow School of Art, UK European Project aiming at mass customization of vehicles Weblog about Designerly Ways of Customising