Mass Customization Assessment: Development of Key Performance Indicators

The current market interest for products tailored to individuals’ preferences along with customer fascination for being involved in production processes bring mass customization to be an efficient and flexible solution for manufacturers to not only satisfy customers’ needs, but also to 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 support the implementation of a mass customization strategy by developing an indicator set aimed at driving, during the development phase, 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 elicit strength and weaknesses of different solution space alternatives supporting companies to improve their customized proposal. The significant effect of the design process on the performance level of a mass customized system led this study to develop indicators that can be measured during the design phase.