Amalgamation of mass customisation and agile manufacturing concepts: the theory and implementation study in an electronics switches manufacturing company

Abstract

This paper reports a research which was pursued with the purpose of indicating the need of amalgamating mass customisation and agile manufacturing principles for achieving competitiveness in organisations. The research findings and observations on these principles were used to design a model named as agile customisation programme. The implementation study of this programme was conducted in an electronics switches manufacturing company situated in India. The practical implications of this programme were studied by gathering feedback from the executives of this company. The details of these works are briefly presented in this paper. Further, the practical implications were used to propose a roadmap. Future researchers may adopt this roadmap and implement this programme in various types and sizes of companies. The performance of this programme in those companies shall be measured using agile manufacturing metrics such as responsiveness, time compression, quality improvement and profitability.

Organizational agility: ill-defined and somewhat confusing? A systematic literature review and conceptualization

“…Attaining strong competitiveness and superior business performance constitutes a major challenge for firms, especially in a volatile business environment. Customer demands are becoming more dynamic (Vinodh et al 2010b) and the frequency of environmental changes is increasing significantly (Ahlbäck et al 2017). This leads to growing complexity and uncertainty in the market (Vinodh et al 2010a), thus increasing competition (Vinodh 2010).…”

Profitable Growth Through International High-Technology Product and Market Development

“…Meyer and Lehnerd, 1997) identified several advantages to adopting an MC strategy: faster product adaptation, lower product development costs, increased product reliability, and greater flexibility in the firm's strategy. These MC advantages have in fact been underscored in several studies (Fogliatto et al, 2012;Vinodh et al, 2010;Bardakci and Whitelock, 2003;Jiang et al, 2006;Kaplan and Haenlein, 2006;Salvador et al, 2009;McIntosh et al, 2010).…”

Agile manufacturing: an evolutionary review of practices

“…The definition of mass customisation appears to be more common across literature than the definition of agile manufacturing (Brown and Bessant 2003;Da Silveira, Borenstein, and Fogliatto 2001;Tu, Vonderembse, and Ragu-Nathan 2001;Vinodh et al 2010). Da Silveira, Borenstein, and Fogliatto (2001) argued that mass customisation involves the ability to offer a wide range of products and services variety to every customer at low price.…”