In July, 2001 Gale International negotiated a joint venture agreement with POSCO E&C (Korea’s largest engineering and construction company) and the City of Incheon, South Korea, for the planned development of a completely new city, called Songdo City. Located at the site of General MacArthur’s 1950 landing, Songdo will be the first “new” city in [...]

Kerry and Bryce Moore. Designers and owners of Context Furniture in Royal Oak, Michigan, USA, have written a guest article in Metromode, an online magazine based in Michigan.  In the article (written as a series of posts over a week in February), they explain how their company has utilised mass customization and manufacture on demand [...]

Two articles have recently been published that provide an interesting comparison between current car manufacturer’s approach to personalization, and the prsonalization ideas put forward by up-and-coming auto design students. In the manufacturer’s corner is Skoda (part of the Volkswagen Group), which was reported in UK magazine Auto Express as planning to offer a service to [...]

I am a little late in writing about this, but it is worthwhile: Last month The Guardian, a UK newspaper, described how Moshe Einat is developing new inkjet technology that uses thousands of ink drops rather than a small number of nozzles. Einat is a lecturer and researcher at the College of Judea and Samaria [...]

Auto Express, a British car magazine, reports in a short news item that BMW are: “…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” [...]

In a post titled ‘3D Printer Brings Vision to the Poor‘, Mark Proffitt looks at how digital manufacturing technology is being used to provide eyeglasses to people in low-income countries, where the conventional optician service would be far too expensive for those that need it. Mark Proffitt notes that: There are two obstacles to providing [...]

Webpronews.com staff writer Mike Sachoff reports on customized music provider Orpheus, which allows media producers to create customized music that will fit the specific needs of their projects. It uses a web-based software engine that allows the user to create custom music cues tailored their specific needs. According to the article: “Users can control the [...]

The Harvard Business Review has published its list of ‘Breakthrough Ideas for 2007‘. Included on the list is ‘An Emerging Hotbed of User-Centered Innovation’, which is described by Eric Von Hippel, who first described the ‘Lead User’ concept twenty years ago. Von Hippel notes that: “In an array of industries, producer-centered innovation is being eclipsed [...]

The latest edition of academic publication ‘International Journal of Manufacturing Technology’ is a special issue on e-Manufacturing and Mass Customization. The issue is guest-edited by Dr. Pingyu Jiang, of the State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, part of the School of Mechanical Engineering at Xi’an Jiaotong University in China. In his editorial, Dr. Jiang [...]

A number of product configuration system suppliers will be exhibiting at the SolidWorks World 2007 Conference, being held from February 4 through February 7, 2007 in New Orleans, USA. The ninth annual SolidWorks World Conference brings together designers, engineers, managers, and partners to discuss ideas, trends, and the technology shaping the future of mechanical design. [...]

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 [...]

The Idaho Statesman carries an article about Tom Falash, who opened a wine store in Boise, Idaho, USA. This is not a regular wine store. It lets customers make their own wine for less than US$10 per bottle. The process works as follows: Customers can taste wines before choosing which one to make. Falash takes [...]

The New Scientist magazine website carries a feature on the Fab@Home project being developed by Cornell University.  The Fab@Home project involves the creation of a cheap self-assembly device capable of fabricating 3D objects.  The researchers, Hod Lipson and PhD student Evan Malone, hope the machine could kick start a revolution in home fabrication – by [...]

A number of interesting conferences dealing with mass customization and related topics will take place in 2007, and I thought it might be a good idea to summarise what is happening during the year ahead. The first event of interest is a German language-only event MC2007 Salzburg (Mass Customization Tagung für Deutschland, Österreich und die [...]

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’, [...]