Fast production for order fulfillment: Implementing mass customization in electronics industry

Modern means to improve efficiency in manufacturing are quite diverse. However the traditional cornerstones are those still to pursue. Scale, cost, quality and time in a row are the targets and also paradigms where business is managed. Mass customization is one of these modern means to achieve these goals. It is customizing product to individual customers and producing those with principles of mass production. The key issue in it is customer focus. Fast production means delivering products to customer faster than the lead-time of the whole manufacturing process in order to satisfy customers. This can be achieved utilizing standardized methods and modularized product structure. This paper addresses to review elements of mass customization for fast productions systems. Based on theoretical cornerstones a model is created. It is generated from Finish electronic industry based on large development project entity with several manufacturing companies. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.