WHAT IS MASS CUSTOMIZATION

 Mass Customization is the new paradigm that replaces mass production, which is no longer
suitable for today’s turbulent markets, growing product variety, and opportunities for e-
commerce. Mass customization proactively manages product variety in the environment of
rapidly evolving markets and products, many niche markets, and individually customized
products sold through stores or over the internet.

 Mass customizers can customize products quickly for individual customers or for niche
markets at better than mass production efficiency and speed. Using the same principles, mass
customizers can Build-to-Order both customized products and standard products without
forecasts, inventory, or purchasing delays. 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.

Advantages of Mass Customization for companies and customers

Mass Customization can be seen as a specific production strategy, in which

companies seek to supply the customers with highly customized products that are
able to satisfy differentiated needs and wants of customers.

The benefits of mass customization for companies are two-fold.

1) Companies are able to supply customized products that satify specific customer
needs.
2) Companies are able to postpone the final design characteristics of the product, to
when the company exactly knows which features the customer wants.

Therefore, companies using a mass customization strategy are not only able
to tailor their products to their customers, they also have the opportunity of not
producing products with specific features not directly satisfying the customer's
needs, which in the end might save costs for the company and the customer.
However, this strategy requires some strategic capabilities.

 The different elements of the end
modularity, meaning that different
incorporated or withdrawn from the
design of the product must be very
different sets of modular components.
products need to have a great degree of
components of the product can easily be
final design of the products. Therefore, the
modular, and be easily configured by using

 Likewise, the company needs to have a flexible production layout, in which

customized parts can be effectively incorporated.

 Furthermore, companies pursuing a mass customization strategy might need to have

a very flexible base of suppliers, who are able to deliver differentiated components
quickly, so that lead-times for the customized products are held to a minimum.

MAJOR CHALLENGES WHILE IMPLEMENTING MASS CUSTOMIZATION

The difficulties in implementing a successful mass customization are mainly due to two main
problems, which we call them external and internal complexity.

EXTERNAL COMPLEXITY: It refers to the uncertainty encountered by customers when they

intend to customize their products. It arises because of three main factors which are:

1) The limited information processing capacity of humans.

2) Lack of customer knowledge about the product.

3) Customer ignorance about his or her real individual needs.

INTERNAL COMPLEXITY: It is experienced inside the company's operations. It refers to the

problems faced by the company because of the extensive product variety induced in mass
communication. It is mainly due to the proliferation of product variety which negatively
affects operations by increasing costs and slowing down the velocity of the supply chain.