Customer-driven Mass Customization Technology Research

Mass Customization (MC) aims at providing customized products with the efficiency and cost of mass production. It is considered as the new frontier of 21 century. With the drastic market competition, companies have to transit from mass production, which focuses on products, to mass customization, which focuses on customs. So the author advances Customer-Driven Mass Customization (CDMC), and studies the theory of CDMC. Including the following parts:Firstly, the basic theory of MC is studied and the research work of MC at home and abroad is summarized .On the basis of the theory of MC , the concept of CDMC is put forward, and the overall framework is set up. At the same time the development pattern and the key technology are analysed .The essential of CDMC is to solve the paradox-the cost of massproduced products and the customization of products. Customization and product modularity are the basic feature of CDMC, which are studied in this paper. The pattern of CDMC is classified by the customer involvement in the production cycle and the types of product module.In order to realize customizations , product configuration is the key factor. How to deal with the relationship of customization and modularity type is that how to configure them. The paper analyzes the method and the reasoning mechanism about configuration. The web-based configurator is studied .The successfully implementing CDMC requires considering the practice of production, which aims at the company application . A web-based customization system based on study of the paper is presented, which refers to some successful examples about MC and the production status of our country. The case provides a model for the implementing CDMC in the future.