New features imply new principles? Deriving design principles for mass customization of cyber-physical consumer durables

Cyber-physical consumer durables (CPCDs) are product-service combinations that reflect the functional and structural features of cyber-physical systems. Not only due to their complexity, but also to their significantly different functional and structural features, mass customization (MC) of this new category of goods poses challenges. Due to the largely differences of features, a straightforward exportation of the mass customization principles of traditional consumer durables does not seem to be possible or sufficient. The objective of our research was to investigate relationships among the functional and structural features of traditional consumer durables and cyber-physical consumer durables together with the known principles of mass customization, and to hint at what kind of new principles are demanded by cyber-physical consumer durables. A reasoning model for deriving design principles for MC of CPCDs has been developed. In this paper, we present and compare the identified system features of these two categories of consumer durables. Our observation has been that: (i) there is a subset of conventional mass customization principles that can be applied in cyber-physical consumer durables without changing their content or method of application, (ii) another subset of principles can be adapted, (iii) many new features of CPCDs require brand new principles, and (iv) some current principles cannot be reused because they contradict with the features of CPCDs. The results of the reported research can be used as the basis for developing a theoretical foundation, as well as a methodological framework for MC of CPCDs. To