There have been a few recent articles from various sources regarding the U.S. auto industry, which provide an interesting basis for a discussion about the role of mass customization in the future of the automotive sector. In Industry Week, a recent feature by Yorgos Papatheodorou and Michelle Harris, which primarily dealt with the geographical spread [...]

In TheManufacturer.com, there is an interesting guest editorial by Harald Kofler, president of a company called American High Performance Seals. He speaks about the growing ease with which businesses can purchase customised industrial components at much lower prices than might be expected.  Articles by an executive of a company can often be categorised as ‘Advertorial’, [...]

As we draw towards the end of 2006, It is reasonable to say that the idea of empowering customers with a higher degree of control over their relationship with business has gained widespread acceptance. This basic idea has been researched in great depth over the last twenty years or so. Various terms and acronyms, such [...]

Morgan Miller, a 24 year old designer, has set up an offline customization store for women’s shoes in South Beach, Florida.  The store can turn around a customer’s design in just 30 minutes.  Her story was featured recently in the Miami Herald.

Dan Gilmore, Editor-in-Chief of Supply Chain Digest, has provided some interesting views on the question of off-shoring manufacturing from the United States to low-wage economies. His article is a commentary on a Wall Street Journal piece called “Still Made in the USA”. He notes that “many companies that just have not achieved the level of [...]

Mass customization is always associated with a high degree of automation and machine-based manufacturing. After all, central to the premise of mass customization is that the product can be provided at a cost similar to mass produced alternatives. It is generally accepted that ‘craft’ production, with a high percentage of the total work carried out [...]

3D CAD Software supplier Solidworks recently highlighted its work with Moobella, a Taunton, MA, USA-based company that has developed a vending system that allows customers to choose fresh, hard-packed ice cream flavors like cake batter and accompanying mix-ins like chocolate chips, and have a scoop of ice cream in their chosen mix within 45 seconds. [...]

VoodooPC, the specialist producer of personalized, high-performance PCs, has launched its first new model since it was recently taken over by HP. The OMEN Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad Core uses the Intel Core2 Extreme Quad-Core processor. The company quotes the new processors as having 70% more processing power than Intel’s dual core processors. The [...]

After much recent media comment suggesting that Dell’s build-to-order strategy no longer provides an advantage in the marketplace, the company has responded through its Direct2Dell blog. Mike Gray, who is described as a ‘Supply Chain Evangelist’ says that: “it may depend on what part of the supply chain you are looking at … on the [...]

Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. a retailer of customized stuffed animals, has announced an agreement with Choose Germany A/S as a new international franchisee.  Choose Germany A/S is a subsidiary of Choose Holding A/S a Denmark company which also holds the franchise rights to Build-A-Bear Workshop in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The franchise group is led by [...]

In the last couple of days, a number of interesting articles have described current advances and trends in supply chain management that are relevant to mass customization implementation. In the RFID Journal, Beth Bacheldor writes about NEC’s use of new RFID Gate Technology, that leverages radio-wave reflection techniques. Rather than shoot radio waves directly at [...]

CustomFlix Labs, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., has introduced the ‘CustomFlix CD on Demand‘ service. The new CD on Demand service is similar to the current DVD on Demand service and offers independent musicians, artists, labels, and other music content owners an inventory-free way to reach a worldwide audience and make their [...]

The Long Tail is written by Chris Andersen, editor of Wired magazine and a former jounalist for The Economist. He also runs the Long Tail website. It is a treatise on the changing nature of retail trade, centered on one central concept: The combined sales of modest sellers and obscure items can equal those of [...]

Dell computer, the World’s largest computer maker (and most successful mass customizer) have set up a blog called ‘One2One – Direct Conversations with Dell‘ as a way of improving communication between the company and its customers.

3D software and services firm Geomagic recently released Geomagic Studio 9.  This latest release of the digital reconstruction software features three major areas of enhancement: 3D feature-based modeling, advanced color texture generation and greater versatility with user-defined patch layouts.