Challenges and critical successful factors for apparel mass customization operations: recent development and case study

Mass customization (MC), which is popular in the fashion industry, is proposed to provide customers with products with a high degree of adaptation and a price comparable to a mass product. Both the manufacturer and customers can benefit from it. However, how to properly apply the MC strategy when facing challenges in the real world needs more exploration. In this paper, we first review the related operations research literature. Then, we conduct a real case study of a fashion company adopting MC in China. We highlight the challenges and critical successful factors for implementing apparel MC. We identify important technologies in fashion MC systems. We also propose future research opportunities on MC operations in the fashion industry.

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