Mass Customization

ABSTRACT How does information become power, who gains and who loses, and what are the implications of this process? As much of the information we produce today is available to very few global companies and governments it is crucial to develop new concepts and modify the existing theories on information and power. Drawing on the political economy of communication, sociology and information science literature, this paper introduces an analytical framework to understand the mechanisms through which information is turned into power and their social and cultural implications. Volume is defined as the informational resources – the amount and diversity of information and the people producing it. Control is described through two competing and complementary mechanisms: popularization (information relevant to most people), and personalization (information relevant to each individual person). The main argument is that the ability to transform information into power requires controlling the interaction between the growing volume of people and information by balancing popularization and personalization mechanisms. This framework is then applied to demonstrate Google’s monopoly of knowledge, its PageRank algorithm, and its inevitable commercial and cultural biases around the world.

... and Food Processes Jason Matthews1, Richard McIntosh2 and Glen Mullineux3 ... 1 Dr. Jason Matthews is a senior researcher at the Innovative Design and Manufacturing Re-search Centre in the University of Bath's Department of Mechanical Engineering. ...

This dissertation aims to aid in the understanding of Mass Customization. It is recently presented as a new business strategy not only for Industries but also for any sort of business activities. State of art theories, business strategies and aspects, such as Open Innovation and Customer - driven value creation are addressed to support the idea of Mass Customization. Tools and techniques for industries are classified according to their field of appliance. In particular, the tools are classified into the following fields; Marketing, Product Development and Data Management, Production Design, Production Management and Logistics. The contribution to Operations Management through the field of Production Systems Design & Management is held by the research that is focused on Flow Production Lines, and more specifically on Continuous Flow Manufacturing. The most well established techniques of Flow Production are recognized as H. Ford’s System and Toyota Production System. Nowadays, they are expressed by the efforts of implementing the Lean Production principles. How Mass Customization is involved in a system of Flow Production? How the production flow reacts by the exertion of Mass Customization in Flow Production? Can production flow be customized according to demand? Is it efficient or not? The study of production flow can give the answers. In this dissertation, an algorithmic procedure of designing Flow Production Systems. The purpose is to customize the flow in accordance with demand. The algorithmic procedure is performed by a system that is named as Flow Customizer™ v.1 (stands for version 1). The procedure can be implemented in cases that either demand or the number of final products change. The implementation of the results of Flow Customizer™ v.1 is assessed as beneficial or not according to each case study. The procedure is described by specific phases and steps that are displayed by a flow chart. The Flow Production System that is redesigned by the Flow Customizer™ v.1 consists of Production Modules that are connected to each other through a Kanban System. The procedure’s function and its result of a Modularized Production System is explained by an application paradigm. Moreover, pieces of information from an industrial case study about organizing two production line’s resources are subjected. Calculation, optimization and also management decision issues are indicated through the procedure of designing Flow Production Systems. The results that derive from the function of this system are addressed. Main conclusions and future research directions are noted.

After the earthquake and tsunami occurred in Chile on February 27th 2010, the Technical University Federico Santa Maria was asked to contribute with reconstruction proposals for the commercial infrastructure destroyed in the town “San Juan Bautista”. Located 600 km (~370 mi) away from the continent, this town is not just the home of several endemic species, but is also located next to a National Protected Area and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Within this context, the design problem consisted on the development of a component-based strategy and prefabrication requirements, and to reduce to the minimum the implied logistics and environmental impacts of the new buildings. With a Studio of 23 final year students and the support of the Architecture Firms Association, 11 projects were developed using digital tools such as visual programming and digital fabrication. Finally, technical documentation was produced and delivered to the local and government authorities.

Paper propounds that Invisible Innovation in developing economies leads to cost optimization as required for the product to be sustainable and competitive in local markets. This feeds into Circular Economy and Reverse Innovation by way of economic translation. It studies the market factors leading to this translation and its self-propagating nature. We have thus build a process chart of relation between Reverse Innovation, Circular Economy, Invisible Innovation and Economic Translation Factors. The underlying theory of the paper is that developing economies, trying to achieve economies of scale for mass customization, leverage circular economy and invisible innovation. Following the success of the same and its viability in developed economies completes the cycle for reverse innovation.

The concept of mass customisation is not new yet the UK construction industry has yet to grasp this opportunity to deliver greater value to its customers. The government report Rethinking Construction [Egan 1998] clearly identifies this issue:'We have repeatedly heard the claim that construction is different from manufacturing because every product is unique. We do not agree. Not only are many buildings such as houses, essentially repeat products which can be continually improved but, more importantly, the process of construction is ...

Today's manufacturers increasingly face demands on customized products to meet the challenges of global competition and customer satisfaction. As a result, many manufacturers have adapted their business models to mass customization, which enables customers to order customized products tailored to their specific needs. This new model combines mass production's economies of scale with custom manufacturing's flexibility. In order to successfully

Mass customization (MC) which was introduced by Davis (Future perfect, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA 1987) has become a reality; nevertheless not all MC stories had a happy ending. Many companies implementing MC failed while some others succeeded such as National Bicycles Industrial Company of Japan, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Benetton, Chryslers, and Dell. How to determine the best MC strategy to be implemented or even if such a strategy should be adopted? In the literature many methods for implementing MC are found, however none of these propose a structured way for implementing and evaluating such a strategy as a whole, each concentrated on one department or phase of the supply or value chains. We suggest in this paper the use of extended value network modelling and simulation for evaluating an MC strategy, and we describe the modelling language used and the approach which will be applied into shoemaking industries via a European project named DOROTHY.

"Przedsiębiorczość jest trudnym do uchwycenia czynnikiem, który determinuje zachowanie jednostek na rynku oraz warunkuje sukces indywidualnych aktorów ekonomicznych, a w konsekwencji determinuje wzrost gospodarczy poprzez pośrednie generowanie nowych wynalazków. Artykuł rozpoczyna się krótkim przeglądem rozwoju poglądów na temat przedsiębiorczości i wpływu techniki na rozwój gospodarczy, zwracając szczególną uwagę na zmieniające się oblicza perspektywy historycznej. Autor jest zdania, że czasy determinują możliwości ludzkiej działalności, która ma szeroki zakres wpływu na wybór sposobu produkcji. Dlatego na działania przedsiębiorców można spoglądać w sposób
ewolucyjny."

Mass customization could be considered as a new trend in the apparel industry. Not only, the fashion industry has limitations of the short life cycle and low predictability market but its supply chain also faces many obstacles to achieve this customization with a high level of customer satisfaction and more flexibility at low cost. The present study aims to address the factors affecting the performance of supply chain. That’s why a survey and individual interviews have held with apparel supply chain professionals in order to focus on these factors and construct the relationship among them through simulation and modeling using a system dynamic approach. The results have revealed that the product variety, lead time, return policy and quality levels affected dramatically the supply chain profit under mass customization. Moreover, some potential areas have been suggested for further studies in order to enhance the supply chain profitability whenever mass customization system is applied ...

La riflessione sulle neuroscienze e il diritto è da tempo avviata. Occorre proseguire in essa e indagare le possibili nuove aggressioni e, di conseguenza, i nuovi bisogni di tutela per la persona umana da esse rivenienti e le molteplici ricadute nel diritto civile delle scoperte neuroscientifiche, destinate a rivoluzionare e travolgere anche postulati classici, istituti e categorie civilistiche tradizionali.
Basti pensare all’individuazione dei mirror neurons ed al conseguente possibile uso del neuromarketing nella contrattazione. Rispetto alle nuove minacce alla libertà di autodeterminazione da esso riveniente, l’inadeguatezza della tutela e dei rimedi (datati) del codice civile impone la ricerca di ulteriori strumenti di tutela del consenso. Il neuromarketing -  preoccupante anche perché si innesta nei processi decisionali, nel nucleo delle preferenze ed abitudini di vita, dell’identità e della personalità stessa del consumatore - determina  un indebito condizionamento del consumatore;  l’anomalia che si determina nel processo formativo della volontà – di carattere strutturale in ragione dell’inserimento dell’atto (promozionale) di neuromarketing nel contesto dell’attività di commercializzazione - impone la rivisitazione, in una prospettiva funzionale, del principio di non interferenza tra le regole di comportamento e le regole di validità del contratto e l’abbandono dell’anacronistico parametro del consumatore medio, che non tiene conto della mass customization delle attuali strategie di marketing, sempre più mirate, personalizzate, rivolte non indistintamente ai consumatori, bensì al  consumatore concreto, le cui propensioni all’acquisto sono calcolate in base a sofisticati algoritmi personalizzati. La tutela del consumatore va assicurata, oltre che con il rimedio risarcitorio, con la nullità di protezione  del contratto a valle delle pratiche commerciali di neuromarketing.
Il cambiamento di prospettiva da operare, nella riflessione sulle neuroscienze alla luce dell’assiologia dell’ordinamento e della sua innovativa nozione di ordine pubblico, è radicale e impone di vagliare la meritevolezza di tutela nel sistema italo-europeo, con la preminenza in esso assegnata alla dignità umana, di alcune applicazioni neuroscientifiche (mind reading e lie detection) e metodologie di enhancement (delle facoltà cognitive) ed empowerment (delle capacità umane), valorizzando la concezione funzionale e relativa della capacità.
Indubbiamente, le neuroscienze pongono sfide, ma rappresentano anche opportunità. Il fondamentale e determinante contributo delle indagini neuroscientifiche per una più efficace protezione civilistica delle persone in condizioni di debolezza psichica e la tecnica del Brain–Computer Interface per la manifestazione di una volontà giuridicamente rilevante sono solo alcuni degli esempi che lasciano intravedere quanto preziose e determinanti potranno rivelarsi le neuroscienze ai fini della tutela, sempre più effettiva, della persona umana.

Mass customization could be considered as a new trend in the apparel industry. Not only, the fashion industry has limitations of the short life cycle and low predictability market but its supply chain also faces many obstacles to achieve this customization with a high level of customer satisfaction and more flexibility at low cost. The present study aims to address the factors affecting the performance of supply chain. That's why a survey and individual interviews have held with apparel supply chain professionals in order to focus on these factors and construct the relationship among them through simulation and modeling using a system dynamic approach. The results have revealed that the product variety, lead time, return policy and quality levels affected dramatically the supply chain profit under mass customization. Moreover, some potential areas have been suggested for further studies in order to enhance the supply chain profitability whenever mass customization system is applied within the apparel industry.

Cellular automata are models that deal with both nature and artefacts: they can indeed simulate living beings as well as be employed in the creation of objects. After the introduction of this concept by Stanislaw Ulam and John Von Neumann in the late 1940s, many different kinds of cellular automata have been created and have become part of what Christopher Langton called " artificial life " in 1986. The most complex examples among them are based on stochastic development, thus they share their structural properties with morphogenetic models like the one suggested by Alan Turing (1952). This is the reason why some cellular automata are capable of simulating the development of living beings , but also of cities and artefacts. They are indeed widely used in computer graphics related to parametric design, in order to create performative objects at various scales that can be produced according to the principle of mass customisation. The purpose of this study is to analyse the properties of these models with the help of computer simulations and, as a consequence, to explore some of their different fields of application. As a result, it can be observed that these processes , based on a stochastic geometry, can lead not only to simple biomimicry (regarded as the artificial replication of biological features) but also, in a wider sense, to bioinspiration (a more general relation between nature and artefacts based on shared structural properties).

For centuries, it was thought that essentially only two categories of transportation vehicles exist, each with reciprocal advantages and disadvantages. Vehicles for the medium of land are most practical for people's daily use but don't have the larger carrying capacities and global ranges of vehicles for the medium of water. The development, beginning in 1904 of a third category of vehicles, namely those for the medium of air (a category entirely dependent upon technology) have provided the best of advantages of the two previous categories of vehicles yet without those categories' corresponding disadvantages, and has won major usage worldwide, replacing many earlier vehicles of transportation. An analogous situation exists for communications vehicles. Vehicles for Interpersonal communications, a category which is aboriginal but now has its reach enhanced by such manifestations as telephony and text messaging, offer each communication participant shared control and customization of contents yet degrades when the number of participants in a communication increases beyond two. By contrast, vehicles for Mass communications, which arose from the analog technologies of the Industrial Era and still continue, can involve mass numbers of people participating as receivers of contents yet can't offer each customization of the contents or shared control of the contents (control which in Mass communications lies solely in the hands of its sender: publisher, broadcaster, etc.) Those two categories of communications vehicles have reciprocal advantages and disadvantages. However, the relatively recent invention of a third category of communications vehicles (namely computer-mediated communication) provides the advantages of both Interpersonal and Mass vehicles but without each of those categories' disadvantages.  Mass reach with simultaneous Interpersonal (individualized or individuated) customization and shared control. That is the new in New Media.

Ensaio teórico apresentado no Depto. de Teoria e História da Universidade de Brasília - UnB. O ensaio tem por objetivo identificar diretrizes de projeto aplicáveis à incorporação do conceito de ZEMCH (Zero Energy Mass Custom Homes) para edificações habitacionais industrializadas, trabalho feito por meio de estudos de casos comparativos.

Mass customization (MC) is a popular strategy in the fashion industry. MCaims at satisfying individual customer’s needs with customized products and at acost near that of mass production. In this chapter, we first conduct acomprehensive literature review on MC in the fashion industry. We then propose ascheme to classify the MC practices as traditional and innovative. By exploringmany real world cases, we compare and develop insights on the applications ofdifferent kinds of MC in the fashion industry. Managerial recommendations aregenerated. We believe that this chapter can lay a good foundation for futurestudies on MC.

We present dimensions for classifying service mass customizers. Our work is based on a conceptual analysis and synthesis of goods mass customization and service classification dimensions found in literature. The dimensions proposed could help service companies striving for mass customization to position their mass customized service offerings related to competitors and to identify management issues they could face.

Purpose – The project seeks to discuss the phenomenon of mass customization in the automobile industry on both industry and company-levels; it does so by defining the current position of the industry on in terms of customization classification systems. Further, the project aims to identify the trajectory of customization in the industry by exploring customers’ automobile customization preferences and reflecting on automakers’ offerings. Last, the research aims to investigate the supply chain challenge associated with mass customization and how can automakers respond to this challenge. The project aims to reflect on this matter through BMW - MINI as a case study.

Design/methodology/approach – In this project, the author used an integrated quantitative and qualitative approach. A survey tool was used to collect data from a large sample of current and potential automobile customers in order to define their customization preferences. The qualitative part of the paper heavily relied on existing models available in literature, specially the classifications of mass customization. The qualitative approach also used interviewing and observation to reflect on MINI as a case study; the project applies the theory of supply chain on MINI’s Oxford Plant in the UK, which stands as an exemplar of a 100% mass customizer.

Findings – The project presents three key themes in its field of research. Frist, the automotive industry is currently at a configuration stage customization, with automakers racing towards more variety and individualized offerings. Second, customer’s preferences reflect a relative knowledge about pre-purchase customization, with a limited number of customers who actually used and benefited from it, yet, interestingly, the results show that customers are seeking more customization of their cars and are willing to sacrifice financial and time resources for this purpose. The project also showed how mass customization brings challenges of efficiency and lead times with most automakers are now taking more time than customers are willing to wait. Last, the project investigates the importance of supply chain concepts like lean, agility and supplier relationships in enabling MINI to be an entirely mass customized production facility.

Research limitations/implications – for the literature based part, a more thorough and in-depth view of existing literature is possible in a longer time span; for the primary data collection part, the relatively disproportionate sample size of the study limits its generalizability of the findings. The study is geographically focused on the UK in most of its aspects. Regarding MINI, a more thorough analysis is plausible in coordination with the company research department. The case study can provide more insight to the research if the whole value chain is visualized and an interpretation of how each part of the value chain is tuned up to allow mass customization.