Mass Customization Assessment: Development of Key Performance Indicators

Both current market interest for products tailored to individuals' preferences and customer fascination for being involved in production processes bring mass customization as an efficient and flexible solution for manufacturers to not only satisfy customers' needs but also take advantage of higher market share and profitability. Even though mass customization seems to be a "win-win" strategy for both customer and manufacturer, the exploitation of its potentialities is challenging. This paper is looking forward to introduce some tools supporting the implementation of a mass customization strategy. More specifically, it focuses on the development of an indicator set aimed at driving the configuration of a solution space, namely the product variants and their associated production system and supply chain. As a result, indicators are going to demonstrate strength and weaknesses of different solution space alternatives and support a mass customizer to improve its proposal. Significant effect of design outputs on level of performance of a mass customized system led this study to develop indicators that can be applied in the design phase with also considering lifecycle phases in case of practicability.