I'm looking forward to hear Frank T. Piller speak on Friday afternoon at the UW Business School. His topic will be "The Future of Mass Customization, Mass Production, and Customer Value Creation". It is open to the public and will be held from 1:30 - 3:00 in 2120 Grainger Hall.
Here is some related background information.
Frank T Piller in Production Planning & Control "Does Mass Customization Pay"
Mani Agrawal, et al. in McKinsey Quarterly "The False Promise of Mass Customization"
Paul Zipkin in Sloan Management Review "The Limits of Mass Customization"
Lands' End is frequently written up in the literature along with any number of other consumer/fashion examples (Nike, Timbuktu - messenger carrier bags), but where are the strong "business-to-business" models?
Having lived in this question for some period of time at Techline, the very first question that must be answered is "are they willing to pay for it". A strong economic model (the value side and the cost side) must be understood. Is the category important enough for the customer to pay attention to it (custom shirts/pants etc, versus off the shelf), is there a distribution channel that can service and be part of the offering, and what are the implications to the manufacturing process (ordering, lead time, production planning, production execution, custom identification of final product, delivery, installation, etc.). Given all of this, does the cost/benefit still make sense?
