The development also opens up the European market for creators around the world. Items can now be produced in the EU and shipped locally, reducing the cost – and environmental impact – of long-distance shipping to the EU.

Ponoko CEO David ten Have says the Berlin hub is a departure from the existing making hubs in San Francisco, California and Wellington, New Zealand which are owned and operated by Ponoko.

Formulor has 12 years’ laser cutting experience, with support from leading material supplier Modulor. The Modulor name is well known in Germany – creative professionals have been using them to source materials for more than 20 years.

“It provides a glimpse into what we see as the future of Ponoko,” he says. “Over time we see our role expanding to be about connecting creators, digital fabricators, materials suppliers and buyers of goods rather than simply providing manufacturing services ourselves.”

“So just like eBay provides the marketplace for buyers and sellers to engage, Ponoko provides the world’s first marketplace for buyers and sellers of product designs – and now digital making services.”

The benefit of Ponoko’s online making system for fabricators like Formulor extends beyond accessing pre-paid making jobs from Ponoko’s 25,000 users. “Our automated online quoting system puts an end to manual quoting on a job by job basis,” says Ponoko strategist Derek Elley. “It also means standardized design file formats and automated job status alerts resulting in a much more streamlined and profitable making and customer service process.”

Ponoko says it is working with other digital making service providers to add more making hubs around the world.

The October 2009 issue of Speciality Fabrics Review contains a detailed article on mass customization

Specialty Fabrics Review is the official publication of the Industrial Fabrics Association International (IFAI), a not-for-profit trade association with more than 2,000 member companies representing the international specialty fabrics marketplace.

The October issue of the magazine contains a detailed article by Janice Kleinschmidt on the increasing use of mass customization in the fabrics sector. (I was asked to contribute some views for the report.)

I was struck by the variety of fabrics companies that are using mass customization to deliver unique solutions in both consumer-oriented and business-to-business markets.  The article notes the following examples:

GGBailey.com, the direct-to-consumer division of Racemark International, a made-to-order floor mat manufacturer based in Calhoun, Ga.  Consumers enter the year, make, and model of their vehicles and then view the appropriate shape of mat as they select a mat color, trim, heel-pad shape and color, and personalization or logo.

Globe Manufacturing Co. of Pittsfield, N.H., uses a Gerber low-ply cutter to produce customized firefighter suits. The GearBuilder configurator on its website allows customers to select features ranging from the type of moisture barrier to pockets.

SIF Technology Co. of Sarasota, Fla., which digitally prints custom images on leather, is fine-tuning its process and production line to the furniture market, reports Chris Cudzilo, vice president of sales. “We give [customers] the ability to take the design element of the overall project a step further than they have been able to do,” he says. “We can image and color leather within a 24-hour turnaround.”

Joe Pine, co-founder of Strategic Horizons LLP and author of the landmark book ‘Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition’ advises enterprises of the gains that can be made by adopting a mass customization model:

“If you break apart your processes into modules that allow you to do different things for different people by picking modules out of a bin, then you can efficiently give customers everything they want…I do strongly recommend companies look at flipping the switch.  Get rid of finished goods inventory and do a full mass-customization model.  Because, done well, it actually can lower costs.”

My own contribution focuses mostly on highlighting the findings of research in the area in a way that hopefully makes it accessible to readers.  I referred to the importance of maintaining learning relationships with customers, and the need to provide an effective system to allow customers to specify their exact needs.

My thanks to Janice Kleinschmidt for asking me to contribute views for her  very interesting article.

David ten Have, Ponoko’s CEO, is quoted as saying: “By partnering with ShopBot we bring together more than 20,000 creators and over 6,000 fabricators to use a powerful online service to design, make and deliver goods locally”.  (These figures appear to relate to the overall number of users of Ponoko, and fabricators who are users of Shop Bot equipment.)

Users of the 100kGarages website can get their ideas made locally by owners of ShopBot equipment, and delivered within a few days.  It is powered by Ponoko’s online ‘click to make’ system and users of ShopBot digital fabricators.  While there are users of ShopBot equipment in 54 countries around the world, the 100kGarages website currently shows a list of registered fabricators that have signed up to participate.  These are located mostly in the U.S., but also include fabricators in Canada, Mexico, Australia, United Kingdom and Sweden.

To use the 100kGarages service, users can search a map for a local garage workshop, or alternatively submit a request and then choose from bids placed by a range of ShopBot owners to make almost anything.  The service is free for everyone to search and submit requests, and for fabricators to post profiles and bids.  Interestingly, the user (or ‘maker’ in the terminology of the venture) does not have to upload an actual design file;  they can enter a description of the job, including their ideal purchase price and the delivery deadline.   The maker is advised to describe the project in detail so that fabbers can make an informed bid.  The request can also include links to relevant images, for example a sketches of your idea.

Examples of the wide range of products being created includes things such as tables, chairs, cabinets, car parts, signage, boats, musical instruments, gaskets, sheds, housing.  Materials include wood, plastic, metal and composite materials.

The press release announcing the new service quotes ShopBot President Ted Hall as saying:  “Ponoko’s making system gives our ShopBot owners the ability to receive a new stream of work from a wide range of customers.  Our partnership also means everyone now has easy access to their own local 3D fabricator.”

At the moment, the 100kGarages  system is confined to work involving CNC routers (tools that create by cutting away or subtracting material).  Over time, the partners hope to incorporate more types of tools into the 100Kgarage network.  (Ponoko itself already provides laser-cutting services).

The new service is a significant step for Ponoko, which has produced over 30,000 DIY, hard to find and consumer goods.  Until now, Ponoko’s existing manufacturing resources have been centralised in New Zealand and San Francisco, which can mean expensive shipping charges for buyers not located close to either of the manufacturing locations.  The 100kGarages project will add the ability to transfer the manufacturing of custom-made products far closer to the end customer, reducing transport costs, delivery times, and the carbon costs associated with delivery of the finished product.

The phrase ‘democratisation of manufacturing’ generally refers in various ways to the transfer of manufacturing away from centralised industry to a more distributed model where design data can be easily transferred between the customer and a local supplier who will turn the design into a finished product.  The spread of democratised manufacturing reflects the fact that, for some products, advances in affordable manufacturing technology have cancelled out the financial advantage which had been associated with centralised manufacturing for the last 100 years or more.

Democratised manufacturing capacity is measured not in terms of the size of one factory, but the number of local producers who are networked together and the extent of geographic territory covered by this network.

With 1ookGarages.com, Ponoko and ShopBot are taking a step towards the realisation of democratised manufacturing on a very large scale.

Of course, the flexible systems that enable democratised manufacturing are also associated with another concept that is an closely linked to mass customization – it’s called ‘Economies of Scope’ – where manufacturing systems are flexible enough that it is financially viable for the manufacturer to make every item to the customer’s requirements, with no two alike.

It (the degree of customization available) is a balance between providing the flexibility and the choice, but also making sure customers are going to be delighted with the end product. So, in our photo books, we offer a custom path [that lets] you change every background, template, layout, font. But then we also offer express books, or locked books, where we’ve actually chosen all that, and all you have to do is put a picture in.

It depends on the use occasion, the sophistication of the customer. In stationery, we want to make sure they’re following the appropriate etiquette. That the font is going to apply to the background. That the end product is going to be beautiful and delightful. And so, in that case we’re limiting the choice, so that we increase the overall satisfaction.

He goes on to describe how the company engages with its customers to research the questions described above:

Q. What kind of testing do you do? Do you get 20 people in a room together and have them fiddle with this stuff for an afternoon and figure out if they like the end product? How do you find that perfection?

A. It starts with involving the customer throughout the whole process. We do a lot of upfront prototyping and testing with customers. Then we actually create the creation paths, and we do usability studies. We’ll do in-home ethnographic studies. How people are using stationery in their lives? Where do they have trepidation or anxiety? Where [do] they want to be creative?

Then we put it out there, and we see how it works. Right, we’re a Web company, so our ability to change on the fly and move more quickly than the established commercial printing industry is much greater. And so we can be more responsive. But involving the consumer in the whole process is key to success.

This description reflects very closely the idea of ‘building a learning relationship with the customer’, which is seen in academic literature as an important component in the information cycle between the customer and the enterprise that uses mass customization.

2. The WATBlog, which provides news and information to connect the web, advertising and technology sectors in India, recently ran a ‘Saturday Startup‘ article which examined an Indian t-shirt company called Scopial that uses the crowdsourcing business model. In Scopial’s crowdsourcing system, submitted designs are voted by the community members on a scale of 1 to 5. Every fortnight, a design is declared winner and the respective designers get a reward of Rs. 20,000 cash. The designs are printed on T-shirts and made available on the website for sale.

This article is a little eye-opener to those of us in North America and Europe who perhaps limit our horizons sometimes when looking for examples of enterprises that use interesting business models.

The MilkOrSugar website

At MilkOrSugar, visitors can check pricing, shipping destinations, payment options and the number of basic models for each vendor. The site only publishes products that can actually be completely ordered, paid and shipped online. So car or kitchen configurators are, for now, excluded. Anyone can suggest a site for inclusion in MilkOrSugar.

Via the links on the MilkOrSugar website, visitors can create customized version of a huge variety of products, including a sleeping bag, Samurai sword, bicycle, dress, drums, shoes, skate board, Scrabble board, watch, machine parts, perfume, lingerie, wallpaper or Lego model.

The site also contains reviews of a build to order products, some of which you might not expect: fire extinguisher, guitar, radio controlled car, protein shakes, robot, canoe, with many more products in progress. The site will publish new vendor reviews daily.

In a press release, Stefan Hoevenaar of MilkOrSugar said: “We researched perhaps all websites that offer customized physical products. In many categories, affordable quality products can now be customized, ordered and shipped to your home. The range of things that can be customized is widening rapidly. New manufacturers appear almost every day.”

In some categories, multiple vendors are competing, with most vendors offering customized bags, shoes, computers, candy, dresses and books. Most vendors ship worldwide.

Often, customization is going beyond a print on the outside or choosing a color. Hoevenaar continued: “This is not just some paint on the outside. It’s about assembling or creating your own shapes, about choosing sizes and materials, creating textures and blends. The artisanship of some manufacturers enables their buyer to really become a designer. The concept of Mass Customization, coined in 1987 and promoted by Joseph Pine in 1992, is now becoming reality.”

I discussed MilkOrSugar further with Stefan Hoevenaar, noting that it appears to be more consumer-focused than the other online database of product customization, the Configurator Database. Stefan noted: “We also had a look at the Configurator Database and it seems mostly aimed at researchers. We decided to only include sites that offer customization with direct ordering, incl. payment – as a kind of proof of the pudding.”

“We’re about to include some non-direct-order products like cars, at least for their often exciting customization experience. However, we’ll clearly indicate if payment and home delivery is possible.”

All the links on MilkOrSugar go directly to the websites of the companies concerned – they are not affiliate links. (Affiliate links are advertisements that provides a commission to the website owner whenever a user clicks on a link and subsequently makes a purchase.)

MilkOrSugar is currently maintained by Stefan and his colleagues Tako, Sybren, David, Ritchard, Myrte, Bramantya, Alexander and Melissa, who are a blend of ILUMY and MilkOrSugar staff. It is hoped that it will soon be 100% maintained by MilkOrSugar personnel.

It takes more time and effort than you might think to find and evaluate websites offering product customization, to determine if they are suitable for inclusion in a customization portal. I know this from personal experience, as I made an effort to set up such a portal a few years ago as part of this site, but had to discontinue the project as I could not give it the time that was required.

Stefan and his colleagues deserve praise for developing a very comprehensive and well-presented site that will help to spread the idea of customized products to a wider audience.

Offbeat Guides create personalized, up-to-date travel guides that cover over 30,000 travel destinations, using a combination of search technology and curation by both amateur and professional travel experts.  The Offbeat Guides website states that their guides scour the web to find the best, most up-to-date information about each destination.  Customers can personalize the information they want, based on their travel dates, preferences, and destination.  The guides come with local maps, festivals and events going on during the customer’s period of visiting, exchange rates, key phrases in the city’s language, weather forecasts and other relevant information.

The key selling point of Offbeat Guides is that standard guidebooks are often 12 to 18 months out of date as soon as they are available on bookshelves.  Offbeat Guides claims that its content is the most up-to-date because they have an enormous technology base of spiders and crawlers that find the best information out on the internet, and combine it with information from established authors and thousands of locals who are always updating the information about where they live.

Offbeat Guides is also a strong believer in Creative Commons, in which users can share, create and build information that is available for mixing and remixing into unique new applications. As well as Creative Commons licensed information, it also use proprietary content and professional authors, which it says makes for accurate and authoritative information in our guides. The customer can get their guide in electronic format for printing at home, or Offbeat Guides can create and ship a printed guide before the time of the customer’s trip, with all the latest information packed inside.

According to David Sifry, the company is run by obsessive technologists who happen to travel a lot, rather than being drawn from the travel industry. In order to create a personalized travel guide, they ask the customer just five questions:

• Where are you going?
  When will you be there? – So that they can include information about local festivals, events, club meetings, sports teams, concerts, and other timely information
  Where are you coming from? – With this information, Offbeat Guides will give the customer contextual information, like timezone differences, embassies and consulates for their home country, language guides, exchange rates, electrical adapters needed, and so on.
  Where are you staying? – Offbeat Guides uses this to localize the maps that go into the personalized guide, and put the customer’s hotel right at the centre of things.
  The Traveler’s Name: – They can put the customer’s name ron the book cover, and this can be used for gift purposes.

The website indicates that the pdf version (for downloading and printing at home) of an Offbeat Guide costs US$9.95, and the print edition costs US$24.95 plus packaging and delivery.

In his blog post, David Sifry notes:

You get full control over your guide – so if you already know where you’re staying, you can click to deselect all of the information about hotels, for example. You can add customized chapters and fill them with information that you gather from your friends, or from around the internet.

This reflects an interesting point – that mass customization of products can also refer to the omission of elements that are not needed by the customer.  Mass customization is often described only in the context of a customer adding features or elements to a basic product.  However, there may also be the potential to develop opportunities in the area of allowing customers to omit elements or features from even the basic specification of a product, if these are not needed by the customer.  However, in the case of Offbeat Guides, it does not appear that omitting a chapter results in a lower price.

The personalization of information, whether on travel or any other topic, is normally viewed only in the context of delivery over the web.  If the Offbeat Guides proposal is successful, it will possibly generate a new level of interest in personalized book publishing.  Personalization in this context refers to the content of the book, rather than the more cosmetic types of personalization (such as putting someone’s name on the cover or at various places in the content).

I think that the Offbeat Guides idea could become a success, as there is still a lot to be said for a printed travel guide that is not dependent on an internet connection, or a suitable power supply to recharge a PDA.  Printed documents can be carried around a city stuffed in a jacket or backpack, do not need batteries, can be generally thrown about, and will still work afterwards.

One critical issue for Offbeat Guides is delivery times for printed versions – the company will need to carefully analyse actual delivery times, rather than the claimed delivery times of the various providers.  This will ensure that customers are correctly informed as to whether there is sufficient time to deliver a printed version of their Offbeat Guide before their planned departure date.  Getting this right could prevent a great deal of hassle for the company from disgruntled future customers.  The worst thing for the company would be having to deal with irate customers who do not receive their personalized printed travel guide on time.  Perhaps delivery times, though outside the direct control of Offbeat Guides, could form a useful part of the beta testing.

So, here goes:

The website of Colby College in Maine, USA, carries a profile of Marybeth Luber, CEO of Archetype Solutions, a San Francisco company that offers consumers customized clothing based on their body sizes and preferred styles.

The Internet Retailer website reports that Personalized gifts e-retailer Personal Creations has implemented personalization technology on its website, including product recommendations, to improve the customer experience and meet its goals. The article states that the company has found that average order value is 45% higher for customers who click on product recommendations versus those who do not, and items per order is 68% higher. The article appears to be derived from a press release by Certona, which provided the technology to implement site personalization for Personal Creations.

A new startup based in New York called Proper Cloth offers high-end, customizable men’s dress shirts. The company has been founded by Seph Skerritt, an electrical engineer and recent graduate from MIT. In addition to the many design options, the Proper Cloth configurator appears to offer a very high level of flexibility regarding the size measurements for shirts.

The makers of the Flip Video family of camcorders have teamed up with online marketplace Cafepress.com to offer personalized Flip Mino camcorders on a purpose-designed website called TheFlip.com. Consumers can add their creations to the open marketplace and earn commissions for each camcorder sold using their designs. Users can also elect to have their designs earn commissions for non-profit causes.

That’s it for today!

Yerzies has been founded by Scott Killian and Tim Brule. The press release announcing the launch of Yerzies refers to the founders also having “helped pioneer online apparel mass customization with FanBuzz in 1996″.

Beyond printed tee shirts, Yerzies enables the creation of stitched sweatshirts and mixed-media designs that include metallic foils, glitters and other processes to create apparel which more closely resembles the design trends seen at retail. This includes printing on dark garments, metallic foils, flocks, glitters, glow-in-the-dark materials and stitched processes.

When they’re finished, users can purchase a single piece or set-up shop at Yerzies and sell their creations to other users. Where Yerzies, to my knowledge, has gone one step beyond the other players in this marketplace, is through a feature called “Make it Yerz”, that allows users to mix and match product options and in some cases, even make modifications to the content created by other users. This is very much a reflection of the ‘remix’ culture that has been present for some years in the area of user-generated content in areas such as music and film. It is probably a natural progression for this culture to migrate to the apparel sector, which is already characterised by a high level of creativity.

A quick road test of the Yerzies website shows that they even refer to designs which can be modified as a “Mashable design”, meaning that the original designer has decided to allow other users to modify their original design to create something entirely new.  However, mashed up designs cannot be re-sold by the person who uses this facility.

The configurator uses the concept of ‘layers’, which will be familiar to anyone that has worked with photo editing software. Users can upload their own images to a new layer, or use layers to add extra features from Yerzies range of options. Each design element can be saved as a separate layer within the Yerzies configurator and modified independently of the others. Therefore, if the user wants to go back and modify some part of a design, they can select the layer in question and work on it without disturbing the other aspects of the overall design. It’s a very clever adaptation of the layers concept,

While users can re-size or re-position the original design, and add additional elements to it in new layers, it appears however that there is not the option to actually change the ‘core’ of the original design. For example, I experimented with one design called ‘Rock God’, and found that it was not possible to change the colouring of the text or vary the text itself.

Yerzies says that it is also rolling out a series of robust tools for users to share and market the content they create including widgets that can be placed on their website, blog or favorite social networking site without any programming expertise. In the press release, Scott Killian is quoted as saying: “We allow anybody to create and sell their own designs. Each user decides how much they want to mark them up and they keep the profits.”

In addition to providing a platform for user-generated content, Yerzies has also licensed content from third-parties including typefaces from designers such as Ray Larabie which users can incorporate into their designs. “Helvetica and Times Roman might work nicely for writing a novel” said Killian, “but they don’t necessarily look great on a hooded sweatshirt. We’ve licensed trend-right typefaces that will actually look cool on a tee shirt or hoodie.”

Last year, Yerzies also engaged The Wildlfower Group, a New York-based licensing agency to assist the company with securing licenses with various entertainment and lifestyle properties. In addition to creating their own apparel, users will also have the option to purchase licensed apparel bearing the trademarks of various brands. “Over 20 properties have granted licenses to Yerzies including lifestyle brands David & Goliath, Ripple Junction, ODM and Changes, entertainment and media brands Pink Panther, Planet Earth and Speed Racer and consumer products brands such as Dubble Bubble and Jolt Cola.

The facility to re-use and modify existing designs certainly gives Yerzies an unique selling point compared with other online marketplaces for custom clothing.  Although very new, the website seems to have no difficulty in attracting members.  One to watch.

Ponoko is the brainchild of software entrepreneurs Dave ten Have and Derek Elley. The business was founded on ‘the disappointing experience people face when making (individualized) products’, citing complexity and high financial and environmental costs.

Encouraged by the rise of what they call the Internet connected ‘creative-class’, along with smarter, faster, smaller and cheaper digital manufacturing hardware (laser cutters, CNC routers and 3D printers that connect to your everyday PC), they formed Ponoko, to make real the idea of mass-individualized products created by the Web community and made on a globally distributed network of manufacturing hardware, controlled from any PC.

Users create product designs which they upload to the Ponoko site, and select the materials to be used in manufacturing. Ponoko then makes and delivers the product, or the product parts. This making process can be used to perfect the design.

The next step is to make the final design available for sale through Ponoko, by posting it in the Ponoko showroom for people to view and buy. Ponoko can make the product and deliver it to the customer or, alternatively, deliver the parts to the user for final assembly and delivery to the customer. Ponoko handles the payments between customers and the user whose design is purchased.

The other possibility is that customers could buy a design and make it themselves, using desktop manufacturing systems (laser cutters, CNC routers and 3D printers). While 3D printing systems are currently very expensive and impractical for home use, a number of separate projects are currently underway on 3D printers that would be affordable for home users.

Ponoko’s founders take the view that today’s product making and distribution model is financially and environmentally unsustainable. It is also under pressure to digitize like the music and video industries. The hold the view that because today’s 100-year old product making and distribution system is so ingrained into our every day lives and delivers so much benefit, problems are not so obvious. However, they make a number of points in relation to industrialised manufacturing:

1) Making and delivering (individualized) products is a time consuming, complex and expensive process. This pain does not fit well in a world that increasingly demands instant satisfaction from mass personalized and customized products at low cost.

2) Product making and distribution is cost prohibitive for new entrants without relatively deep financial reserves. This is stifling mass creativity of real products and the progress of humanity on unimaginable fronts.

3) Low cost mass production and global distribution relies upon using lots of cheap energy and labour. But these two resources are running out.

4) Product making and distribution is a major contributor to the global warming problem (according to the WRI, perhaps 20% of the problem). Being environmentally unsustainable, the increasing ‘carbon currency’ costs also make the current model financially unsustainable.

5) Finding individualized products is very difficult and buying such products is a time consuming, relatively complex and expensive burden.

Many of these are very valid points. For existing businesses that use mass customization model, there is already a saving of working capital in not carrying finished goods inventory. However, working capital must continue to be used for raw materials or components.

Ponoko proposes to eventually use a business model where product design data is sold digitally, and downloaded by customers for manufacture at home. If a business (or individual) can move to a situation where it can sell designs as data, it immediately becomes a seller of digital information rather than a manufacturer. All of the expenses related to manufacturing can be eliminated completely, as the company moves towards a purely digital trading model. Ponoko is attempting to position itself as a broker that joins digital design vendors with customers who will become ‘end-manufacturers’ as well as ‘end-users’.

However, it does not automatically follow that a distributed model will provide large reductions in carbon emissions. The energy expended in moving finished goods around the world might simply be replaced by energy expended in distributing raw materials more widely in a distributed manufacturing model. However, this does not take away from the potential of the Ponoko business model to actually bring about the ‘post-industrial revolution’.

A distributed model significantly lowers the barriers to entry for new product creators, and reduces the financial risk. With Ponoko, creators can ship digital product designs with the click of a mouse, rather than physical products requiring costly handling and delivery. And because product designs can be sold to a large global audience from day one, pay back periods can be shortened.

In addition, Ponoko’s proposed distributed manufacturing model means that the marginal cost of selling each additional example of a design is practically zero. (Once the design is completed and on the market, it costs almost nothing extra to the creator to sell one extra copy. There is no requirement to use up materials or components, only the need to transmit the design data to each new customer.)

Because no physical product exists until purchase, product design collaboration makes it possible for everyone to co-create and personalize ‘almost anything’ they need and want. Ponoko says that, as adoption increases, prices for their design-to-order and made-to-order commodity type products will become unrecognisably low.

Ponoko is currently in the beta testing phase. The first manufactured product made by Ponoko from a user’s design was recently unveiled on the Ponoko blog.

While Ponoko is positioning itself as a broker of digital designs in the longer term, if it is successful in the medium term, it implies that significant investment in manufacturing capacity will be required by the company to fulfill orders for finished goods placed through the site. Ironically, if Ponoko is to be successful it may need to become a big manufacturer before it can become the ‘iTunes of design’.

Confego manages order fulfillment and shipping for large retailers such as Reebok, to offer customized versions of their products through the use of Confego’s proprietary software. The company’s primary role is to build and maintain supply chains that are optimized to source customized products quickly and efficiently. Confego has utilized this experience to develop a network of contract factories that are linked directly to client web sites and other points of purchase through their proprietary, web-based order management software.

Through the acquisition, Zazzle will obtain this exclusive software, and will continue Confego’s current relationship with Reebok’s RBK Custom. Confego brings expertise in the customization of the construction of products, including cut, color, fabric choice and custom embroidery. In addition to its current arrangement with Reebok, Confego has also worked with Timberland and Nike.

Zazzle uses on-demand manufacturing to enabling consumers to create customized apparel, posters, magnets, mugs, cards, U.S. postage and other items. The ‘Zazzle Product Engine’ (the name given by Zazzle to its system) also hosts the Zazzle Create-a-Product API, the first-ever API that allows third party websites to offer their users a ‘one-click’ way to turn digital content into custom products.

“This relationship marks the beginning of a new generation of customization for Zazzle,” said Robert Beaver, CEO and co-founder of Zazzle.com, Inc. It would appear that Zazzle intend to use the acquisition of Confego to expand beyond personalization of products (placing images supplied by customers onto stock items) to full customization (allowing customers to specify the attributes of the product). The comments attributed to Brennan Mulligan, co-founder of Confego and now Vice President at Zazzle, would appear to back up this analysis: “Consumers have come to expect more for their money. The growing availability of fast, easy and affordable customization is empowering shoppers to get exactly what they want, without being force-fed what designers are offering.”

The press release issued by Zazzle says that “Mulligan will help Zazzle achieve limitless customization that provides consumers a unique finished product almost immediately and at an affordable price”. Confego’s manufacturing and fulfillment process is said to allow delivery of custom shoes in just one week.

Zazzle has been engaged in an ongoing battle with Cafepress for dominance of the customized product marketplace sector. The two companies have followed broadly similar strategies, often mirroring each others initiatives. With Zazzle seemingly making a move beyond product personalization into full customization, it remains to be seen how Cafepress will respond to this latest development.

The store is one of a growing number that uses a 3D body scanner to take customers’ measurements digitally. The 3D body scanner and RETAILOR SHOP 3D software solution is provided by Human Solutions GmbH of Kaiserslautern, Germany.

During the sales talk, the RETAILOR program provides support for the professional sales person and also helps the customer with his or her decisions, from the basic questions like which cloth or cut to details like the choice of buttons. All data is transmitted online to the available manufacturer of the customer’s choice. The garments are then made and delivered within four weeks.

The store in question is one of a growing number in Europe that have employed body-scanning technology. It was always going to be the case that the deployment of body scanners would be a gradual process.

Shopping for clothes is for many people a social experience (not for me – I try and avoid it). The typical four week waiting time for customized clothing items is an obstacle to the more widespread acceptance of body scanning systems. Waiting a month for something takes away a lot of the customer experience. The next major development will be when the turnaround time for custom-made clothing can be reduced to no more than 48 hours. When this is achieved, it is only a matter of time before body scanning systems become commonplace in regular clothing stores, as well as the more upmarket establishments.

It is often the case that technology providers will issue news releases describing how individual clients have successfully implemented their systems. This story was brought to my attention by a news release of this type. When the PR-speak is removed, there is sometimes interesting information to be found.

The foundation of their philosophies is that design driven manufacturing will not only compete with international low (cost) labour products but will eventually surpass it.

They explain how:

“Our original business model was based on mass-customization, so we could offer custom size, shape, material and finish without significant cost and lead time increases (all associated with custom products.) ….Streamlining the process is essential to mass customization since the focus should be on the endless possibilities of shape, size, material and color.  Our endgame is to develop a reality where the consumer can also act as designer.  We consider this to be the most responsible and efficient way to manufacture.  Create one of something that is truly wanted as opposed to multiple items with an uncertain future.”

This philosophy of making something that is actually wanted fits in well with the idea of sustainable manufacturing.  Any consumer product is less likely to be thrown away if it was made uniquely for one person.

The Moores note that manufacturing sustainably also means being in closer proximity to our customers, which decreases pollution due to transportation.  Also, streamlined production and alliances with similar companies can reduce manufacturing footprints and in turn require less demand on the energy, infrastructure and building consumption.

Apart from being an interesting case study on their business, the Moores’ article provides a very good explanation of mass customization and the other related concepts like manufacture on demand.  They use everyday language that makes their article accessible to any reader, and not just those who are already familiar with the concepts involved.

From my personal viewpoint, the most interesting part of the article is where the Moores predict the growth of ‘manufacturing centres’ for furniture:

“We foresee a time in our industry, where instead of going to Ikea to buy your furniture, you’ll visit a local manufacturing center.  This manufacturing center will have license to produce many designs, Ikea’s included, but will make them for you right there.  This accomplishes several manufacturing sustainability goals: it brings the production of the product closet to the consumer, combines manufacturer’s budget dollars which in turn increases investment in the local job economy, and reduces waste by producing only what there is a demand for.”

Although they do not use the term, what they describe fits in very well with the concept of ‘offline customization’, which has been discussed on this site previously in the context of other sectors such as toys and footwear.  It is quite feasible that a similar model could be applied successfully in the furniture sector.
The existing brands are unlikely to be enthusiastic about licencing their designs to independent manufacturing centres.  They may be concerned about issues like ensuring quality of manufacture.  But if the manufacturing centre idea is successful for any one company, the momentum for change will grow.  If the Moores are right in their calculations (that the manufacture on demand system can beat the low cost import model in a straight fight), then the brand names will move quickly, either by establishing their own centres or licencing designs as the article suggests.

Einat is a lecturer and researcher at the College of Judea and Samaria in Israel. He used the LCD screen as his inspiration for the new technology, comparing the fraction of a second that it takes an LCD screen to refresh with the long delay in printing a page using current inkjet systems. The article describes how:

Instead of emitting light, his idea is to emit ink. “We found a way to make a huge print head. If the print head is the size of the media, there is no scanning any more,” says Einat.

When Einat says huge, he’s really talking about nozzle numbers rather than physical dimensions. His prototype print head measures a modest 12cm by 12cm but contains an impressive 57,600 ink nozzles – think pixels on your LCD screen – for drop-on-demand delivery. The head is made from silicon wafers forming small micro-reservoirs for ink which each feed four normal inkjet nozzles by capillary action. Grouping the nozzles into four overcomes the flow problems with conventional series designs. Laboratory experiments show a large head the size of a piece of paper could be practical.

The advantage of his system is that one page could be printed instantly, with hundreds more pages following in a few seconds. All you’d need to do is move the paper into position, print the whole image at once, and move the paper out again – rather like a simple printing press.

The Guardian article speculates that the technology, if popularised, could facilitate on-demand printing of books. I am not so sure about this, as the rapid printing of pages is only one part of the process required to actually manufacture a book.

This is not to say that the idea would not work; however the advances in quick inkjet printing would need to be coupled with other technologies that could collate, bind and cover the book to the same standard as a factory printed version.

“…working on a design for a super-efficient factory that can make bespoke cars in five days, instead of the current wait of up to six weeks. But there’s one hitch – it could be eight years before the “fully flexible” production line is built.”

It is not surprising that BMW are the company at the forefront of the march towards true mass customization of new cars.  A very high percentage of their output is already made to order (but with the six week time lag referred to in Auto Express) and the BMW-owned Mini brand has popularized the concept of personalization in smaller, less expensive cars.

In his editorial, Dr. Jiang states that

“The aim of organising this Special Issue is to provide a forum for researchers to report current achievements and identify possible directions for further developments and industrial practices in the areas of e-manufacturing and mass customisation.”

Dr. Jiang also outlines the content of the published papers. “An evaluation method for the identification of flexible production technologies for mass customisation in the automotive industry”, by Guenther Schuh et al. provides a report on how to use the principle of mass customisation to the automotive industries. An evaluation method for the identification of feasible production technologies is discussed in detail, which includes defining a customer-oriented product programme, using conjoint-analysis to classify the customer requirements, selecting suitable product structure, and describing database constructioncriteria and finally choosing flexible production technologies related to implementing the logic of mass customisation.

“Design optimisation for customers’ KANSEI requirement: application of Interactive Reduct Evolutional Computation (IREC) to industrial design with curves” by Hideyoshi Yanagisawa and Shuichi Fukuda describes a design methodology for evolving on user’s psychological preferences be means of using IREC. Dr. Jiang notes that

“Kansei engineering has been used to map customers’ emotion information into product structure and shape details. It is also clear that Kansei engineering is a powerful tool to make the mass customisation become true from the angle of customers’ requirement representation.”

“Some key issues on enabling e-manufacturing as a part of product-driven e-business process via e-service”, by Pingyu Jiang and Bing Chen, presents an e-service-driven e-manufacturing solution. The e-formalisation of digitalised machining equipments and
the tree representation of extended enterprise, are discussed in detail. On the basis of these models, the configuring mechanism of product-driven extended enterprise and the correspondent global tracking method of manufacturing data are also put forward.

In “Knowledge web based system to support e-manufacturing of injection moulded products” by Karina Rodriguez and Ahmed Al-Ashaab, the research on developing a digitalised representation model of product life cycle knowledge is presented so as to support the e-manufacturing of injection moulding products.

The next article is “Custom-made production of porous ceramics implants towards e-manufacturing” by Teruaki Ito and Teisuke Sato. In this article a virtual design model for bone formation is put forward, which deals with designing custom-made shapes on hard-tissue implants (design issue) and using porous ceramics for hard-tissue implants (material issue). A framework towards e-manufacturing of custom-made ceramics implants is also proposed.

The final article is “Developing an e-service-based CAPP system for silicon surface micro-manufacturing”, Pingyu Jiang and Xuesong Qi just put forward a methodology to develop the micro-manufacturing process planning system on the web.

I have not yet read any of the articles, and so cannot comment on any of them individually. I recently wrote a post about the failure of U.S. auto manufacturers to implement build-to-order, so the item on mass customization in the automotive industry looks like it would be of particular interest to me at the moment. Articles are are STG£20 each to purchase online.