Mass CustomizationAs a Collaborative Engineering Effort

By Songlin Chen, Yue Wang, Mitchell M Tseng

Prepared by :

12133 Chirag A. Thakur12137 Dinesh Chand Devapujala

12148 Manoj Sharma12156 Rheetam Mitra

12166 Pappu Yadav12182 Sarthak Rohatgi

AbstractFrom a collaborative engineering perspective, mass customization can be viewed as collaborative efforts between customers and manufacturers, who have different sets of priorities.

Mass Customization - An Introduction

It aims to deliver product and services that best meet customers’ needs with near mass production efficiency

The paradigm shift to mass customization is made an imperative for many companies to survive in an increasingly diversified, fragmented and competitive market place

Currently, the focus of research in mass customization is shifting from its strategic viability to operational feasibility

What? Why?

How?

Mass Customization - An Introduction (cont.)

Despite its advances in academia and industry, mass customization continues to be challenged by critics

One of the arguments against mass customization is that it has limited novelty and restricted applicability

Engineering Collaboration via Negotiation (ECN) paradigm (Lu 2003) promises great potential to tame many of the challenges that are currently constraining many mass customization programs

Mass Customization Concept‘Future Shock’ by Toffler, 1970 - “future manufacturing

enabled by information technology would be able to provide customized products in a large scale with little or no extra cost”

Pine et al.’s Harvard Business Review article, 1993 – the ability to provide individually designed products and services to every customer through high process agility, flexibility, and integration

Hart 1995 et al. - Mass customization is a system that uses information technology, flexible processes, and organizational structures to deliver a wide range of products and services that meet specific needs of individual customers at a cost near that of mass-produced items

Mass Customization vs.Mass Production

*Mass Customization as a Collaborative Engineering Effort

Development of Mass Customization

The paradigm shift to mass customization is mainly propelled by three forces :

Market demand - ‘the mass market is dead and segmentation has progressed to the era of mass customization’ – Kotler(1989)

Market competition - Product variety is exploding while product life cycle is shortening

Technological revolutions - Flexible manufacturing systems allow manufacturers to quickly adapt to changes without incurring high penalty in terms of cost and lead time

Mass Customization EconomicsHuffman (1998) – “there’s a thin line between

mass customization and mass confusion”Piller et al. (2004) – “with customers integrated

into the value creation process, companies gain access to more accurate information about market demand and can postpone some activities” which add to cost pools

In general, the key issue in mass customization from an economic perspective is how to leverage economies of integration to compensate potential loss of economies of scale

Conflicts in Mass CustomizationConflicts in name :

Mass – AggregationCustomization – one-of-a-kind

Conflicts in operability :Customers’ demands are diverse andirregular which lead to highcomponent variety, large numbers ofsuppliers, and high administrativecomplexity

Collaborative Engineering As a Tool for Conflict Resolution

Monplaisir and Salhieh (2002) – “collaborative engineering can be viewed as a process in which people working in teams according to engineering methodologies and supported by technical tools can share resources and knowledge to achieve common goals”

Lu (2003) proposes Engineering Collaboration via Negotiation (ECN) as a new paradigm for collaborative engineering. ECN is defined as “a socio-technical decision making activity where a team of stakeholders with different expertise and mixed motives engage in interactive and joint conflict resolutions to co-construct consensual agreements of some engineering matter”

Mass Customization - In Collaborative Engineering Perspective

Conceptually, mass customization can be taken as a collaborative engineering activity, where customers and manufacturers with asymmetric information and different preferences engage in interactive and joint conflict resolutions to co-create an artefact

How such collaboration can be carried out effectively and efficiently is an ideal research topic for collaborative engineering

Mass Customization - The Generic model*

Spring et al. (2000) proposed a generic model of product customization :

*Adapted from Spring et al. 2002

Mass Customization - The Generic model* (cont.)

Problem Solving :The product customizationconcepts and design schemesare determined and agreedbetween customers andmanufacturers

Design Specification :This stage determines thefirm’s performance onsome of the operationalobjectives

Mass Customization - The Generic model* (cont.)

Transfer :Convert design specificationsinto actual products

A limitation of this 3-stagegeneric model is that customer – manufacturerinteraction is confined tothe problem solving stage only

Application scenariosScenario I : Co-Innovation

The manufacturer-centric view holds that innovations result from intentional research while the user-centric (or customer-centric) view contents that many innovations actually come from users

Problem solving in mass customization is collaborative in nature and designated as collaborative innovation (co-innovation)*

Family Architecture (PFA) - As a framework for co-innovation PFA allows customers, product engineers, and process engineers can work under a unified framework with their interdependent relationships explicitly mapped out

* Songlin Chen, Yue Wang, Mitchell M. Tseng

Application scenarios (contd.)

Scenario II : Co-Configuration

The stage where customers and manufacturers come to agree upon the specifications of a specific product offering or customization type

In a typical organization setting, co-configuration often involves customers and sales engineers (sometimes design engineers)

Besides product configuration systems, personal recommendation systems (Stolze and Strobel 2004) are proposed to facilitate customers in product configuration enabled by techniques like data mining, recommendation system

Application scenarios (contd.)

Scenario III : Co-Production

Co-production corresponds to the transfer stage (Spring et al. 2000) by including material conversion, material transportation, shop floor control, procurement, inventory management etc.

By sharing demand and supply information, supply chain partners can better utilize production resources in response to volatile market demand

ConclusionMass 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

It is important that all parties concerned can engage in collaboration with sufficient trust and only then collaborative engineering can play a significant role

The Economist: “Mass Customization a Result of the Third Industrial Revolution”

Application of Mass Customization

Application of Mass Customization

Application of Mass Customization

Application of Mass Customization

Application of Mass Customization

References :

http://etheses.nottingham.ac.uk/182/1/Brabazon_thesis.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_customization http://www.build-to-order-consulting.com/mc.htm http://mass-customization.info/ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/dd9634d0-affd-11e1-ad0b-00144feabdc0,Authorised=fal

se.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fdd9634d0-affd-11e1-ad0b-00144feabdc0.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fmass-customization.info%2Fpost%2F25572611981%2Fthe-financial-times-mentions-personalized-production-as#axzz1yQucDfcG

http://mass-customization.info/post/3466529920/definition-of-the-term-mass-customization

http://nikeid.nike.com/nikeid/index.jsp?promoID=ONHOME#home http://images.google.com/ http://www.porsche.com/usa/models/

Thank

you!