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MASS CUSTOMIZATION
Pattern description
Customizing products through mass production once seemed to be an impossible endeavor. The approach of modular products and production systems has enabled the efficient individualization of products. As a consequence, individual customer needs can be met within mass production circumstances and at competitive prices.
Inventive problems
All product manufacturing operations should be unified in order to scale up production.
All product manufacturing operations should be special to produce customized products.
The product characteristics should be standard in order to easily scale up production.
The product characteristics should be unique in order to meet the needs of each customer.
The company should perform a lot of customer relations operations and receive feedback in order to produce products that fully meet the needs of customers.
The company should minimize the number of customer relations operations to reduce costs.
Application examples
Levi’s experimented with this model in the 1990s when it launched Levi’s Personal Pair. Jeans are customised to perfectly fit individual body measurements, thus allowing a choice of thousands of fit combinations, rather than the traditional 52. A salesperson takes measurements of a customer and enters them into a networked computer along with the desired finish and colour. This information is relayed to the Levi’s factory where the product is individually manufactured on a production line and sent to the store a few weeks later. The jeans are thus made to order with more attractive choices offered to the customer than by competitors. In addition, the retailer has less money tied up in inventory, while individual configuration of the product is carried out on a normal production line, making for an efficient process with higher profit margins. With Levi’s Personal Pair, the company successfully differentiated itself from its increasingly strong competition. In hindsight the initiative was a successful implementation of Mass Customisation; at times some of the stores increased their sales by up to 300 per cent.
PersonalNOVEL produces and distributes personalised books and novels via its website. The customer chooses a predefined novel, thriller or other book and selects names for the various roles and can apply other individual characteristics and dedications to the book. Details such as hair and eye colour, model of car owned by the characters and location can all be defined. In addition to the revenue achieved by this new market appeal, on-demand publishing offers an efficient process that circumvents the need for stock and conventional bookstores.
Founded in 2007, mymuesli is another company that has embraced Mass Customisation. Customers can create their preferred breakfast cereal or muesli by choosing from over 566 billion potential muesli options! This possibility of composing a dream muesli is a far cry from the choice available on supermarket shelves. Thanks to its application of the Mass Customisation business model, the company has been in the black since the very first day it was founded.