Session:

Plenary Speech
Tuesday, March 02, 2004, 09.00 – 10.00

Session Chair:

Paper Title:

The Road to Mass Customization - Bridging the Gap from Concept to Reality

Author(s):

Prof. Dr. Klaus Turowski, Chair of Business Informatics and Systems Engineering, University of Augsburg, Germany

Abstract:

The advancement of information technology, especially Web-based technologies, has moved the concept of mass customization in the focus of both the scientific and the business community. First introduced by Davis primarily as a strategic marketing concept in 1987, mass customization has been more broadly defined by Pine II in 1993 as a means to deliver goods and services, which on the one hand largely meet individual customers' needs but on the other hand are being produced with near mass production efficiency without a considerable price premium for those goods and services. While early adopters of mass customization strategies such as Dell have already demonstrated the profound impact on both company performance and industry structure, there is still some uncertainty about the key factors to successfully put the concept to work in various settings. In this talk, an overview of the basic engineering, production management and technological requirements is given, which have to be combined and coordinated to make mass customization work. Additionally, the current state of research and future research directions will be highlighted.