Achieving Mass Customization Through Postponement: A Study of International Changes

Mass customization is presented as one of the ways to deal with the increasingly demanding and turbulent environments. Achieving mass customization requires the development of multidimensional strategic capabilities. In an evolutionary process these capabilities can be developed. In this paper the capabilities required to realize mass customization are made explicit and postponement is presented as an operational method to move towards a mass customization strategy. Results of an exploratory survey (among 101 companies) are presented to assess the trend towards mass customization based on the development of the necessary strategic capabilities and the application of postponement.

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