Part IV: Interfacing and Integrating the Customer
Getting customers involved and optimally informed
The essence of customization
is to provide only and exactly what each customer wants at the right time.
The process necessary to reach this objective is the configuration process.
Configuration means to transfer customers' wishes into concrete product
specifications. While the basic product families, common product platforms
and the corresponding manufacturing systems are set up when building a
mass customization system, configuration activities take place with every
single customer's order. For each order, the individual wishes and needs
of a client have to be transformed into a unique product specification.
The additional costs arising from the customization process consist largely
of information costs in the sales. They are accounted for by the investigation
and specification of the customers' wishes, the configuration of corresponding
individual products, and the transfer of the specifications to manufacturing.
All theses activities are characterized by a high information intensity
compared to traditional mass production. An important characteristic of
successful customer centric companies is the use of dedicated information
systems to capture these additional costs. Called configurator, choice
board, design system, tool-kit, or co-design-platform, these systems are
responsible for guiding the user through the configuration process. Different
variations are represented, visualized, assessed and priced by these systems,
enabling the customer to interact closely with the firm's capabilities.
While configuration systems theoretically do not have be based on software,
all known mass customizers are using a system that is, at least to some
extent, IT based. Configuration systems can also include physical measurement
tools like 3D-scanners or visualization tools like 3D screens.
Part IV comprises of the discussion of configuration methodologies and
modes for customer interaction. The development and implementation of
appropriate systems for customer interaction is an important success factor
of mass customization - and a field with many open questions (see also
Chapter 30 of this book). The papers in this part should help to answer
some of these questions. In Chapter 13 Khalid and Helander provide an
introduction into web-based do-it-yourself product design (DIYD), as installed
on many mass customization web sites. DIYD is defined as the selection
and configuration of products by customers on their own. However, information
about customer needs is usually incomplete, making it difficult to develop
a configuration system both in terms of the set of options presented there
and the corresponding user interface. Often, customer needs have to be
estimated from population preferences or global market diversities. Of
particular interest in this context is an investigation into appropriate
procedures for customer design conceptualized in different cultures. The
objective is to improve the usability of configuration web sites by addressing
these differences. How consumers behave in such an environment is discussed
by Kurniawan, Tseng and So in Chapter 14. Choosing, matching, and swapping
components and configuration options and assembling them together to a
specific product instead of choosing a ready-made product from a shelf
is a totally new way of acquiring products for many consumers. Thus, the
authors hypothesize that this may change known patterns of consumer behavior
greatly. The authors present a new approach to understanding consumer
behavior using the living system theory. While (traditional) marketing
models rooted in psychological research assume that information (during
the choice process) is evaluated by customers using symbolic processing,
the living system theory explains customer behavior as a collection of
components. Thus, a new way is offered in this chapter to better understand
the essence of being customer centric: the customer.
Bee and Khalid extend this discussion with an empirical study evaluating
three DIYD web sites in Chapter 15. Using factor analysis, three generic
factors are extracted as important features from a customer's perspective,
namely holistic design, navigability, and timeliness. Users seem to prefer
a top-down hierarchical approach when designing the sample products (bicycles,
watches, and dresses). The study also evaluated success factors for the
corresponding design of the configuration system: design procedures, aesthetic
preferences, information display, and design pleasure. The design and
development of configuration systems corresponding to the needs of (potential)
customers is also the topic of Chapter 16 by Porcar, Such, Alcantara,
Garcia and Page. However, the authors follow quite a different approach
and show how consumer expectations can be captured by the Kansei Engineering
methodology. The chapter demonstrates how Kansei Engineering can be used
to guide (inexperienced) customers in order to quickly find the desired
design according to their preferences. This approach may also help manufacturers
in cutting down a wide variety of options in manufacturing among which
a large percentage does often meet not the preferences of the target group.
Focusing production variability on features affecting most users' purchasing
decisions may reduce the amount of design options offered, and may thus
result in an important contribution to controlling costs and reaching
near mass production efficiency in manufacturing.
Hvam and Malis extend the discussion on how to develop and design efficient
and effective configuration systems. In Chapter 17 the authors present
a documentation tool for configuration processes to foster knowledge based
product configuration. Mass customization and similar approaches to create
more customer centric product architectures led to an enormous extent
of variety and complexity. This calls for an effective documentation system
in order to structure this knowledge. Standard configuration systems do
not support this kind of documentation. The authors sketch a rather simple
application that serves as a knowledge based documentation tool for configuration
projects. Their objective is to document complex product models in a way
which considers both the development and the maintenance of the products.
Part IV concludes with an important plea by Svensson and Jensen that the
customer should always be at the final frontier of mass customization
(Chapter 18). The authors show that despite all technological advances
and approaches - such as the ones presented in the previous chapters -
the central limiting factor in the expansion of mass customization will
be the customer. Often, mass customization has mainly been turned towards
product and processes. The authors argue that customers have to come fist.
This is an important point that should never be forgotten when designing
a customer centric enterprise.
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