Pre-Workshop I:
An Introduction into Mass Customization Strategies and Implementation
Facilitators: Frank Piller, RWTH Aachen; Rajan Suri, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Mitchell Tseng, HKUST
Several companies, such as Dell, Adidas, BMW, Nike, Volvo Trucks, etc. are already successfully operating after this new business model. However, a number of well-financed mass customization operations failed (e.g. by Levi Strauss, Procter&Gamble), reminding us of the challenges of mass customization. Using several case studies, this workshop will discuss the success factors of implementing mass customization. The idea is to give conference participants with little mass customization experience a compact introduction into the field.
9:15-9:30: Overiew and introduction
9:30-10:30 Mass Customization Seen From the Customers’ Perspective (Frank Piller)
This part of the workshop will share some of the main factors of setting up successful mass customization systems and will discuss recent trends in from the perspective of the customer.
Frank Piller is a chair professor in innovation management at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He also is a co-director of the MIT Smart Customization Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. His research focuses on value co-creation between businesses and customers/users. Frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Economist, and Business Week, amongst others, Frank is regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on mass customization, personalization, and open innovation. His blog, mass-customization.blogs.com, is the premier source of information on mass customization and customer driven value creation. As a founding partner of Think Consult, a management consultancy, he helps his clients to serve their customers better by using truly customer-centric strategies.
10:45-12:00 Connecting Customers Preferences and Supply Chain to Support Mass Customization: Product Family and Configurators (Mitchell Tseng)
Mass Customization aims at producing goods and services to best meet individual customer’s need with near mass production efficiency. In order to accomplish this, product offerings need to be structured logically so that customers’ preferences not only can be captured effectively but also be fulfilled with supply chain within the customer’s expected lead time and with scale of economy. In this presentation, the speaker will discuss approaches to design product family and its structure, or Product Family Architecture (PFA), so that product offerings can be presented intuitively to avoid customers’ confusion. Simultaneously, product family also serves as launching pad for fulfillment to synchronize with suppliers and factory. Discussion will also be included to incorporate contemporary techniques of customer co-design and supply chain management chain management to meet the seemingly contradicting goal of mass customization.
Prof Mitchell Tseng joined the ong Kong University of Science and Technology in 1993 as the founding department head of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management after working in industry for almost two decades. He started his career in industry as a Manufacturing Engineer and progressed through several management and executive positions. He is an elected fellow of the International Academy of Production Engineers (CIRP) and published more than one hundred technical papers and two books, Customer Centric Enterprise (with Frank Piller, Springer, 2003), Transformation through Global Value Chain (with Behnam Tabrizi, Stanford University Press, 2007). He was a faculty member in University of Illinois – Champaign Urbana and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Tseng’s interest in Mass Customization started when he managed the computer configuration program for Digital Equipment Corporation in mid 80’s. He is widely recognized for his work in Mass Customization and has been serving as co-chair of the MCPC conferences. Sponsors of his research include AT & T, Astec-Emerson, Esquel, Honeywell, HK Research Grant Council, Lucent Technologies, Natural Science Research Foundation (China), Rockwell International, Liz Clairborn, Motorola, Nokia, GAP, Ford Motor, Yusan Products, Hong Kong Air Cargo Container Limited, and Sterling Products.
12:45-3:15: QRM and POLCA: Manufacturing and Material Control Strategies to Support Mass Customization (Rajan Suri)
A critical factor for success of Mass Customization (MC) strategy is responsiveness, specifically, the ability to customize a product but at the same time deliver it to the customer with an acceptable lead time. This ability depends on the manufacturing and material control strategies adopted by the enterprise. Although the Pull (Kanban) strategy associated with Lean Manufacturing can be powerful in certain situations, for companies making customized products, Lean and Kanban have several drawbacks. Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) can be a more effective competitive strategy for companies adopting MC. We provide an overview of QRM strategy which focuses on lead time reduction throughout the enterprise. We explain why Lean strategies of Flow, Takt time and Pull don’t work well for customized products because of the variabilities introduced into the system. On the other hand, QRM restructures the enterprise, in order to effectively cope with such variabilities, and thus QRM is more applicable for MC. We describe POLCA, a material control system to be used as part of QRM. We show why a Kanban system cannot be applied for customized products. Instead, POLCA allows for customized routings, individual product variations, and load variability, and thus provides an effective method to support MC. The combination of QRM and POLCA provides companies with competitive advantage through their ability to deliver customized products with short lead times.
Rajan Suri is Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Bachelors degree from Cambridge University (England) and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is internationally regarded as an expert on the analysis of manufacturing systems, and is author of the book Quick Response Manufacturing: A Companywide Approach to Reducing Lead Times (Productivity Press). Dr. Suri serves as Director of the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM), a consortium of over 50 companies working with the University on understanding and implementing QRM strategies. Dr. Suri has consulted for leading firms including Alcoa, Danfoss, Hitachi, IBM, John Deere, Pratt & Whitney, Rockwell Automation, Siemens and TREK Bicycle. In 2006 Dr. Suri received the Albert M. Sargent Progress Award the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), for the creation and implementation of the Quick Response Manufacturing philosophy.
Facilitators: William Mitchell, Ryan Chin and the MIT Smart Cities Group
9:30 – 3:00 Your chance to become part of the MIT Design Lab for a day. Interact with Media Lab members and the MIT Design Lab team to co-create innovative solutions and latest designs for mass customization and personalization applications. You will work on an actual project and learn about MCP design and prototyping during the day. An highly interactive experience in a creative environment.
William J. Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, holds the Alexander W. Dreyfoos, Jr. (1954) Professorship and directs the Media Lab's Smart Cities research group. He was formerly Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning and Head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, both at MIT. He teaches courses and conducts research in design theory, computer applications in architecture and urban design, and imaging and image synthesis. A Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Mitchell taught previously at Harvard's Graduate School of Design and at UCLA. His most recent book,Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City was published by MIT Press. His earlier books include: ME++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City; E-Topia: Urban Life, Jim—But Not As We Know It; the edited volume High Technology and Low-Income Communities (with Donald A. Schon and Bish Sanyal); City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn; Digital Design Media (with Malcolm McCullough, two editions); The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era; and The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation, and Cognition.
Ryan Chin is a fourth-year PhD student at the MIT Media laboratory in the Smart Cities research group. He is building the car of the future – a stackable, sharable, electric, two-passenger city vehicle that rethinks urban mobility. This work, in collaboration with General Motors, takes into account problems of parking, congestion, energy efficiency, pollution, communication, and considers the best and most efficient uses of available resources in urban environments. The project also serves as a platform for investigating mass-customization, personalization in product-development processes, and MIT Media Lab technological innovation. In 2007 Chin along with Professors William J. Mitchell, Frank T. Piller, and Marvin Minsky help found the Smart Customization group at the MIT Design Lab. This MIT-Industry collaboration focuses on improving the ability of companies to efficiently customize products and services. Chin at MIT earned a master of science in media arts and sciences and a master of architecture; and bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering and architecture from the Catholic University of America.