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Personalised and mass customised products

Mass customization and personalization news

Could You Write About Personalization?

MadeForOne.com is looking for contributors who are interested in writing a feature article relating to personalization and mass customization. Contributions are invited in the following categories:

Case studies: Do you run an enterprise that uses mass customization? You may have a story to tell about how your enterprise moved from mass production to mass customization, or perhaps how you set up a specialist mass customization programme. For case studies, the writer should consider what is of genuine interest. A bland PR-speak type article isn't really suitable. What is suitable is an article covering such items as the company background, the factors which influenced chosen strategy, problems encountered, lessons learned and so on.

Please note that case studies involving manufactured goods are only accepted from the manufacturing enterprise (not agents, affiliates, retailers or dealers). If you are in doubt as to whether your company's activities can be considered mass customization, apply the following test: If the product is fully manufactured before the order is received, it reflects a high level of product variety, but it is not mass customization. If the product is fully manufactured (or perhaps finalised) after the order is received, and is made to the customer's requirements, and is competitive in price with mass produced alternatives, then it's likely that it is mass customized.

In certain cases, a service industry enterprise might be considered to be involved in mass customization. In general the same test can apply here: If the service is taken 'off the shelf', then it's not mass customized. If it is combined from defined component tasks and can be adjusted easily to fit requirements, and this provides savings to the customer, then it may be mass customization. In general, any service enterprise which describes itself as a provider of 'solutions' is unlikely to be a mass customizer, because the 'solutions' buzzword is usually synonymous with high-cost, bespoke services.

Technology Features

If you have particular expertise with technology of relevance to mass customization (for example, implementing a particular product configuration system), and would like to share your experiences or knowledge, you contributions would be welcome.

This heading does not include 'White Papers' from technology vendors. While these can be useful and informative, they are written within the constraint of publicising information systems offered by a particular vendor. It is likely that this website will set up a separate section for white papers shortly.

Research and Ideas

If you have carried out research on a particular aspect of mass customization, either professionally or as part of your studies, and would like to share it with a wider audience, perhaps you could submit it for publication. While this website is not an academic journal, it is interested in publishing ideas which someone may have regarding particular concepts or theories. General articles containing basic definitions of mass customization will not be considered, as this is already addressed on the site.

Opinion Pieces

If you have opinions that you wish to share on topics related to the content of this website, you are welcome to submit them for consideration.

General Conditions

Any article submitted for publication must not have previously been published online. If an article has been previously published offline, the author must guarantee that no breach of copyright will take place if it is subsequently published in MadeForOne.com.

The person submitting the article must have any necessary authority to write about the subject matter, and must have the right to be recognised as the author of the article. Any article submitted, which is found not to be the original work of the person submitting it, will be rejected.

Payment will not be offered for articles submitted, whether published or not. However, MadeForOne.com will fully credit the author and will provide links within the article to the site of any case study enterprise, or other site or personal weblog of the author as appropriate. The nature of link(s) to be included will be agreed before publication.

The author of the article will retain the right to re-publish the article elsewhere, 30 days after the date of publication on this site. A link to the original article must be provided in any subsequent online re-publication. (This condition does not apply if the article was published offline prior to publication on this site).

How to Submit

You should first contact the Editor using the email address on the Contacts page with your idea. This is for the contributor's benefit, so that an idea for an article can be briefly discussed before the hard work is done.

Articles should be submitted as .txt or .rtf files. Accompanying images should be in .jpg for photographs and .gif for diagrams. Image files should be no wider than 400 pixels.

For guidance, you can view all 2004 Feature articles here.



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