The what, why and how of mass customization

Production Planning & Control,
Vol. 15, No. 4, June 2004, 347–351

Special issue editorial: the what, why and how
of mass customization
IAN P. MCCARTHY

Abstract. This paper introduces the aim, scope and content of accompanying increase in variety and uncertainty,
this special issue on mass customization. It begins by providing without affecting lead-time, cost or quality. This
a background review of mass customization, which revolves
around two questions: what is mass customization, and why problem is compounded by the fact that the mass
mass customize? By focusing on these, the paper presents defini- customization opportunity can require very differ-
tions and explanations of the different approaches to mass cus- ent approaches, depending on factors such as the
tomization, and describes the potential reasons for and benefits type of market served, the product complexity and
of mass customization. In addition to setting the scene for value, and the level of customization offered. The
the special issue, this introductory review asserts that there is a
relative dearth of research on how to design and operate main topics of the Special Issue focus on the need to
a manufacturing system capable of mass customizing. This is a understand the different strategies, configurations
system design or configuration issue, which involves determin- and practices of manufacturing systems that enable
ing the most appropriate or viable design for the available range mass customization.
of multiple and interdependent design variables. However,
despite the strong interest in configurational research in the This problem of how to implement and operate new
business and operations strategy area, there are few works manufacturing strategies is a recurring and important
that develop and propose models for understanding how to theme in operations management. Skinner (1996) con-
mass customize.
ducted a seminal review of the theory and practices asso-
ciated with new manufacturing strategies and concluded
that of all the challenges facing manufacturing compa-
1. Introduction
nies, the task of successfully implementing new manufac-
turing strategies is greatest. The problem is not about
In crafting the call for papers, I wrote:
understanding what constitutes the strategy, but deter-
Mass customization is a strategy that seeks to mining how to design and transform an organizational
exploit the need for greater product variety and system from its current form (configuration) into one
individualisation in markets. However, the chal- capable of achieving its new goals. This is certainly the
lenge for managers is to design and operate case for mass customization, because even though the
integrated systems that can accommodate the opportunity to mass customize has significantly increased

Author: IAN P. MCCARTHY, SFU Business, Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings Street,
Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3, Canada.

IAN MCCARTHY is the Canada Research Chair of Management of Technology in the Faculty of
Business Administration at SFU. His research focuses on understanding and designing competitive
and sustainable organizational forms using systems methods, classification tools and evolutionary
concepts. This involves technology and operation management issues such as: managing opera-
tional complexity, mass customization, modelling decision-making in new product development,
and classifying drug discovery strategies. Dr McCarthy is a qualified chartered engineer, a member
of the EPSRC College (a UK research council) and a director of the Complexity Society.
Previously he was on faculty at the University of Warwick and the University of Sheffield, and
held management positions at Philips Electronics, British Alcan and Footprint Tools.

Production Planning & Control ISSN 0953–7287 print/ISSN 1366–5871 online # 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/0953728042000238854

348 I. P. McCarthy

with improvements in the cost and speed of collecting . The ability to forecast and understand market
and processing information using the internet, one of opportunities is increased from the improved and
the key challenges inhibiting the adoption of mass custom- frequent communication with customers.
ization practices, is the limited number of studies that
With the business case for mass customization gaining
explicate how to design and operate manufacturing
acceptance, Pine (1993) was one of the first to consider the
systems accordingly. This issue of strategic implementa-
operational implications of mass customization for manu-
tion (i.e. How to realize the desired configuration?) is
facturers. He stressed that mass customization should
crucial for understanding how to translate manufactur-
strive to deliver a personalized product without incurring
ing strategy into operational reality. It is a system design
a cost penalty. This view has been endorsed by others (e.g.
problem that involves searching a space of strategic con- ˚
Beaty 1995, Ahlstrom and Westbrook 1999, Tu et al.
¨
figurations, whose elements are different combinations of
2001) who argue that mass customization should provide
manufacturing capabilities (McCarthy 2004). Thus, the
configuration perspective is consistent with the ‘how’ numerous customer prescribed product variations, but
question, as it helps frame and develop models that pro- with little or no lead-time or cost penalty. Based on this
duce both synchronic (categorical or associative) and ideal notion, the following definition captures the essence
diachronic rules (predictive or effective) on how to design of mass customization for manufacturing firms:
and change systems. The capability to manufacture a relatively high
volume of product options for a relatively large
2. The what and why and how market (or collection of niche markets) that
demands customization, without tradeoffs in cost,
The term ‘mass customization’ was first coined by delivery and quality.
Davis (1987) in his book Future Perfect, in which he The last part of the definition refers to the common
described a trend where companies sought to micro- operational difficulty of avoiding or minimizing any form
segment markets and offer unique products and services of tradeoff (Corbett and Vanwassenhove 1993, Mapes
to customers. It is a strategy that involves producing et al. 1997, McCarthy 2004). This means that manu-
goods and services for a relatively large market, while satis- facturing firms seeking to mass customize will face two
fying the specific needs of individual customers using an challenges. First, the ability to design a system capable of
envelope of product and cost options. It is also important collecting and processing highly varied and uncertain
to note that the word ‘mass’ both implies and defines that product information; and, second, the ability to trans-
a relatively high volume of products is produced for a form and assemble materials to produce a corresponding
mass market. This definition would therefore exclude ˚
range of product variety (Ahlstrom and Westbrook 1999,
¨
those firms that produce relatively low volumes of Salvador et al. 2001, Tu et al. 2001, Duray 2002).
bespoke products. The emphasis on material transformation and assem-
To understand whether a company should adopt a bly in the second challenge is not simply to make the
mass customization strategy has been tackled by a num- problem manufacturing relevant, but to stress the unique
ber of researchers (e.g. Kotler 1989, Pine 1993, Agrawal difficulties faced by manufacturers wishing to mass cus-
et al. 2001, Berman 2002). The general conclusion is tomize, as opposed to service firms wishing to mass cus-
that the case for mass customization revolves around tomize. For instance, Wind and Rangaswamy (2001) use
the following competitive factors: the terms mass customerization and mass customization
. Customers and their expectations have shifted from to distinguish between the customized offerings created
a broad base of uniformity and sameness to a net- by service firms and manufacturing firms respectively.
work of niche and heterogeneous market require- Mass customerization and mass customization both aim
ments. to provide customized offerings, but with mass customi-
. Fashions and customer preferences shift literally zation the task is to personalize and manufacture a
overnight, and product life cycles have become physical product and with mass customerization the per-
significantly shorter. sonalization process focuses on a service in terms of infor-
. Assemble to order and the construction of product mation and marketing. To illustrate this point, Wind and
families are strategies that offer options and differ- Rangaswamy (2001) present the case of garden.com,
entiation, whilst maintaining performance in terms which tried to transform the nursery industry. The tradi-
of cost, quality and delivery. tional nursery model involves serving customers who visit
. Understanding and satisfying specific customer a store location and select from about 200–300 plants
expectations enables a company to achieve a better and, in most cases, they then have to transport the plants
strategic fit with customers’ long-term needs. back to their homes. With garden.com, customers visit a

The what, why and how of mass customization 349

website that allows them to design a garden (e.g. are the basis for achieving one or more strategic priorities
Japanese style or English style) subject to local soil and (e.g. mass customization).
climate conditions and using an inventory of over 16,000 To summarize the current status, researchers have
plants and other related products. The customer creates identified and discussed some of the configuration
the product design and defines the resulting bill of elements needed to support mass customization (e.g.
materials. The point of this example is that garden.com flexibility, postponement, information technology and
did not own or operate any stores and it did not own decoupling points). Yet, others (e.g. Kotha 1996,
or operate any manufacturing or growing facilities. It Feitzinger and Lee 1997, Silveira et al. 2001) point out
focused solely on capturing the needs of individual cus- that this work can be too industry-specific or lacking
tomers and then managing a supply chain to deliver the the theoretical robustness or empirical evidence to help
bill of materials for the garden designs. develop, implement or achieve them, regardless of the
As the awareness and popularity of the mass customi- context of the firm.
zation concept continued to grow, researchers began to
explore and classify the different approaches for mass
customizing. To understand these variations required 4. The special issue’s articles
knowledge about the factors that govern a mass customi-
zation strategy. For example, researchers (e.g. Pine 1993) Together, the 11 articles that appear in this special
believed the degree of product variety offered by a com- issue make contributions that help address the ‘How’
pany is a defining factor, while others (e.g. Huffman and question. This does not involve simply importing ideas
Kahn 1998, Ross 1996) contend that the stage and from existing areas of operations management and adapt-
amount of customer involvement is a varying feature of ing them to suit the mass customization paradigm, but
mass customization. With just these two factors, it is by using them to provide rich, theoretically-grounded
descriptions of how manufacturing systems should be
obvious that different firms in different industries will
configured to achieve certain levels of mass customization.
develop different approaches to mass customization,
Mikkola and Skjøtt-Larsen’s article establishes a
each requiring a different organizational configuration.
framework for examining how manufacturing systems
The result is a plethora of conceptual models (many
should be configured for mass customization in terms of
referred to by the papers in this special issue) that identify
postponement and modularization. They achieve this by
and describe either the general strategic approach or one
presenting a modularization characteristic curve, which
aspect of the approach (e.g. the degree of customer invol-
illustrates the combined effect of component customiza-
vement, the type of product modularity and the degree of
tion, value inputs and supplier–buyer interdependence.
product variety). From these simple but useful models it
The intention is that the framework will help users better
is apparent that even though the essence of mass custo- understand how configurations should be designed by
mization is relatively fixed, at an operational level it will analysing the relationships between mass customization
often mean different things to different groups of firms and postponement in relation to modularization.
because the following factors will vary for firms: Comstock, Johansen and Winroth examine the
. the product volume/variety ratio; experience of a leading Swedish mobile telephone man-
. the complexity and value of the product complexity; ufacturer’s experience of introducing a manufacturing
. the point of customer involvement; system for the production of a customized, entry-level
. the degree of customer involvement; mobile telephone. They use product, process and system
. the type of product modularity offered; perspectives to examine the consequences and ability to
. the nature of the customized offering and the mass customize when moving the customization order
perceived value. point downstream in the value chain. They also critically
evaluate the company’s status as a mass customizer.
Despite the variety of strategies for mass customization, Tu, Vonderembse and Ragu-Nathan report a study
interested individual firms will all ask the same question: that collected data from 303 US manufacturing firms.
how do we implement a successful mass customization The study sought to gather and analyse empirical evi-
strategy? Although all firms are unique and the specifics dence on how manufacturing managers design systems
of the answer are likely to vary from firm to firm, it is to cope with the environmental uncertainty and increas-
possible to identify and aggregate the different, but ing product variety that goes with a mass customization
appropriate, technologies, practices and capabilities strategy. It examined the configurations that permit mass
into a number of distinct manufacturing configurations customization in terms of re-engineering set-ups, preven-
(Rakotobe-Joel et al. 2002) or ‘prescribed formats’ tive maintenance, cellular manufacturing and quality
(Greenwood and Hinings 1996). These configurations assurance.

350 I. P. McCarthy

Salvador, Rungtusanatham and Forza seek to inte- until an order is placed, collecting more precise informa-
grate the product design, marketing and operations man- tion about market demands and the ability to increase
agement aspects of mass customization by investigating loyalty by directly interacting with each customer. This
how the extended enterprise should be configured when approach is intended to help manage the tradeoff
different degrees of customization are offered. They pre- between the benefits and costs of customer integration.
sent a number of case studies of firms in different indus- Potter, Breite, Naim and Vanharanta use an approach
tries. These illustrate the degrees of freedom customers that is central to the configuration perspective. They
have in specifying product features and how these affect develop and present a typology that helps define the
the configuration of the extended enterprise. Their find- anatomy of potential mass customization configurations.
ings reveal two distinct configurations, each one suggest- The typology is applied to supply chains to show the
ing a similar structure between the product structure and capabilities and areas of change needed for mass custom-
the configuration of the extended enterprise. izing. By using the typology, firms can benchmark their
Coronado, Lyons, Kehoe and Coleman provide a case current configuration and identify a route to achieving
study that describes the use of an internet-enabled pro- mass customization.
duction information system to facilitate information shar- Finally, the paper by Squire, Readman, Brown and
ing across a build-to-order system. The system consists of Bessant provides a needed and valuable reminder of the
three tiers of a high-volume, high-variety supply chain. question: does mass customization really hold the key
The paper reports that improved levels of information to customer value? They argue that mass customization
transparency will lead to better co-ordination and syn- could augment customer perceived value, but that this
chronization of schedules, which in turn can result in would occur only for certain customers, in certain mar-
significant reductions in raw materials and component kets, at certain times. Thus, before adopting and imple-
stock across the supply chain. menting a configuration for mass customizing it is
Duray advocates the merits and utility of using classi- essential that firms recognise whether their customers
fications to understand and design configurations. She (existing and potential) would really value customization
then explores the effects of modularity and customer of their products. They present a tool that aims to address
involvement on production planning. The study uses this question.
data which have been gathered from a survey of US
manufacturing plants. The findings lead to conclusions
that the type of modularity employed will significantly
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