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as.
bart.maccarthy@nottingham.ac.uk, +44 (0) 115 951 4023
1. Introduction
Mass Customization (MC) is not a mature strategy and hence it is unlikely that a single orsmall group of operational models dominate. From an examination of cases MacCarthy et al(2003) distinguished five operational modes. One of these modes, Catalogue MC, is the focus of
attention in this paper and is defined as the mode in which a customer order is fulfilled from apre-engineered catalogue of variants produced using standard order fulfilment processes. In thisMode the engineering of products is not linked to orders, but completed before orders are
received. Customers select from a pre-specified product/option range and the products aremanufactured by the order fulfilment activities that are in place. Likewise the order fulfilmentactivities are designed and engineered ahead of an order being taken.Even when limiting the focus to the Catalogue MC Mode there is no reason to believe thatorganisations are constrained to one model. Companies are approaching MC and the Cataloguemode either from a mass production or a customization origin (Duray 2002) and this in itself is
reason to believe that several order fulfilment models will be observable. In some cases it isproduct proliferation that has motivated the up take of Catalogue MC, where variety is required
for market segments, such as a global product that needs to be differentiated for differentmarkets (Feitzinger & Lee 1997), and in other cases it is customization for the end customer thatis the motivation, such as computer servers (Swaminathan & Tayur 1998). The diversity ofcontexts is further reason to believe that a number of models are being applied.
2. Delineating the order fulfilment processes
Order fulfilment is not a universally used term as noted by Kritchanchai & MacCarthy (1999)
who found ‘few sources in the literature discussing the details of the order fulfilment processexplicitly’. There is no standard definition of order fulfilment and no common understanding of
what activities it involves.In the context of manufacturing, it is intuitive to say that order fulfilment involves the handover
of material to the customer. Beyond this it is less certain as to what should be treated aspart of the OFP. If the goal of order fulfilment is to comply with the customer’s requirements,in particular the WHWW details (What product(s), How many, Where to deliver to, When to
deliver) then a) the OFP is not involved directly with the customer totake the details of the orderand b) for not only must OFP encompass some material processing/transportation activities butalso some element of control logic. At one extreme the logic may be a simple rule for which
product to take from the shelves and the activity be nothing more than handing it over to the
customer, but at the other extreme the OFP may involve the triggering and sequencing ofcomplex production and distribution processes. Therefore, while the details and scale of the OFPfrom one situation to another might differ greatly, in general terms the OFP encompasses the
material processing activities concerned with complying with customer instructions and thecontrol of these activities.
It is tempting to use the Customer Order Decoupling Point (CODP) which is ‘traditionallydefined as the point in the manufacturing value chain where the product is linked to a specificcustomer order’ (Olhager 2003) to delineate th