Product Development and Customization

Mass customization research examines how firms can deliver individually tailored products at costs and speeds approaching those of mass production, a challenge that sits at the intersection of product architecture, supply chain design, and customer behavior. Central to this work is product modularity—the deliberate decomposition of a product into loosely coupled components or platforms—which determines how much variety a company can offer without proportionally multiplying operational complexity. A key tension researchers continue to probe is how far customization can extend into a product before the coordination costs across design, manufacturing, and supply chain partners begin to outweigh the revenue gains from differentiation. Active directions include quantifying when and how changes propagate through modular architectures, how firms should time the point of product differentiation within the supply chain, and how to meaningfully incorporate customer input early in development without destabilizing the engineering process.

Works

33,730

Total citations

364,348

Keywords

Mass CustomizationProduct ModularityDesign Structure MatrixComplex Product DevelopmentSupply Chain ManagementPlatform-Based Product Development