Mass Customization: An Enterprise-Wide Business Strategy

Dave Gardner has the solution to what others say is undoable with mass customization.

This Mass Customization book provides critical insights into what a manufacturer must do to efficiently quote, configure and produce on-demand custom product orders for their customers. With the strategies gained from from his consulting in Mass Customization with many diverse companies, author Dave Gardner explains what is required to dramatically decrease cycle times and improve profits by approaching mass customization as an enterprise-wide business strategy seamlessly connecting customers to the enterprise.

Offering customized products can change the competitive landscape. Dell did this when they made computers sold directly to customers on demand without premiums in either price or lead time. There are other advantages that mass customization offers including: 

• Minimizing inventory to unthinkable levels.
• Being agile and quickly responding to market/technology changes
• Eliminate the cost and risk of finished goods inventory
• Improving profits while better meeting customer expectations

Who should read this book? Anyone whose company faces a constant, uphill challenge with respect to configuration management  quoting, configuring, and producing highly-configured products and wants to know why the pain persists and what to do about it. 

There are many issues that plague manufacturers of configurable products. Companies need a process that serves their business and their customer’s needs and, with the mass customization principles described in this book, they can: 

• Get quotes in the hands of customers quickly.
• Stop selling configurations that can’t be produced and start making it easy to customize products and gain competitive advantage.
• Improve gross margins.
• Stop top-level product documentation from becoming a bottleneck in getting products from product development into manufacturing.

“Dave has summarized his years of experience in implementing the elements of a sustainable and profitable mass customization system in diverse business settings. He is one of the few individuals in the world that really have researched and executed mass customization thinking in a consistent and pragmatic way…you will benefit tremendously from reading his advice…” said Frank T. Piller, Co-Director, MIT Smart Customization Group, MIT, USA, Professor of Management, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, http://www.mass-customization.de

Look to this book as part of a new marketing and manufacturing strategy with an expert consultant who can take you through the process step by step. 

Key stats: 

• Title: Mass Customization
• Subtitle: How Build to Order, Assemble to Order, Configure to Order, Make to Order, and Engineer to Order Manufacturers Increase Profits and Better Satisfy Customers

“Any manufacturer planning on shifting from Mass Production to Mass Customization had better understand that it is a company-wide initiative, not something just for manufacturing. Learn how to make it your business strategy by reading David Gardner’s insightful, practical book. And if you’re not planning on shifting to Mass Customization – you better read it all the more.” B. Joseph Pine II, Author, Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition, The Experience Economy, and Authenticity

“Dave Gardner brings years of experience and an intuitive sense of the well woven fabric of excellence. All of this is evident in his new book that should be in the toolbox of anyone seeking to compete successfully in the future global economy.” Ronald Ferrill, VP, American LaFrance 

“As an executive whose organization richly benefited from the concepts and practices described in this book, we went from a poor respondent to customer needs to a best responder—along with better revenue and, more importantly, more profit. Thanks for taking the time to write this book—many people will benefit I know.” Robert W. Duncan, Chairman and CEO, System Industries 

“Dave Gardner is the ‘go-to’ guy if you need to fix the operational challenges associated with highly-configurable products.” Guy Gandenberger, VP of Worldwide Operations & Foundry Business Unit, Micrel, Inc. 

“Dave Gardner ’s insights on how to implement mass customization will help companies address the tough challenge of how to better meet customer needs and simultaneously reduce costs.” Alan Fortier, President, Fortier & Associates, Inc. 

“ ‘Mass-Customization’ paints a clear picture of why manufacturers need to embrace mass customization, and more importantly how they can make this work. Dave Gardner does a fantastic job of clari-fying the implications of this strategy for the entire organization.” Tom Breur, Principal, XLNT Consulting, The Netherlands

“Using 21st Century technology to streamline 20th Century busi-ness models is a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, that is the approach most organizations seem to take – try to make stale, old, and obsolete ideas more effective through technology. In “Mass Customization: An Enterprise-Wide Business Strategy,” Dave Gardner provides a clear and convincing argument that the circumstance that made mass production relevant in the 20th Century no longer exist and that 21st Century business demands not only a change in systems, but an enterprise-wide change to a mass customization mindset. This book is a must read for all discrete product manufacturers.”
Douglas T. Hicks, CPA, CMC, Cost Measurement and Management Consultant, D. T. HICKS & CO. 

“I found this book to be extremely insightful. This isn’t just for manufacturing leaders. I encourage executives across the enter-prise (sales, marketing & engineering) to read and learn from this book.”Brian Gant, Manager, Global Engineering and Ops, Cisco Systems, Inc. 

“David has summarized his years of experience in implementing the elements of a sustainable and profitable mass customization system in diverse business settings. He is one of the few indi-viduals in the world that really have researched and executed mass customization thinking in a consistent and pragmatic way. So I am sure that you will benefit tremendously from reading his advice and reflections to better understand how you can build for your company a full set of mass customization capabilities that sets your business ahead in these tough times.” Frank T. Piller, Co-Director, MIT Smart Customization Group, MIT, USA, Professor of Management, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, www.mass-customization.de