Editorial: advances in mass customization

This special issue marks the 25th year of mass customization research. Twenty-five years ago, leading companies turned to mass customization to improve customer satisfaction, market share, and company success. Companies developed customer integration techniques, modular design techniques, flexible manufacturing systems, and supply chain management (SCM) methods. Research papers described mass customization goals, elements, and configurations. Over time, research papers turned from describing mass customization to developing new customer integration techniques, modular design techniques, flexible manufacturing systems, and SCM methods. Over the past 25years, more than 500 research papers were published that described new customer integration techniques, modular design techniques, flexible manufacturing systems, or SCM methods.