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productionand the production of highly specialized, individualizedproducts. Wall (2000) argued that mass customizationshould offer the customer the same kind of functionalitythat might originally have been delivered via a bespokesolution, but at a much lower price, and with the convenienceof purchasing a standard product.
In the view of Tu et al. (2001), manufacturing practicessuch as shopfloor employee involvement in problemsolving,re-engineering set-ups, cellular manufacturing,preventive maintenance, quality improvement efforts,dependable suppliers and pull production facilitatemass customization. These practices should help firmsto quickly and cheaply manufacture a variety of products
that meet specific customer needs (Koufteros et al. 1998).However, increasing product variety comes with a numberof difficulties. Many companies are being faced withthe problem of providing as much product variety aspossible for the market, while at the same time keepingas little variety as possible between the products in orderto maintain economies of scale (Bi and Zhang 2001).By increasing product variety a firm would experiencelower performance of its internal operations because
of higher direct manufacturing costs, manufacturingoverhead, delivery times and inventory levels (Salvador
et al. 2002). The work carried out by Fisher and Ittner
(1999) in a vehicle manufacturer in the US found thatgreater day-to-day variability in option content hasa significant adverse impact on total labour hours percar produced, overhead hours per car produced, assembly
line downtime, minor repairs, major rework andinventory levels.
Salvador et al. (2002) suggested that companiesmay mitigate the tradeoff between product variety andoperational performance by deliberately pursuing modularityin designing their final product architectures thenobtaining final product configurations by mixing and
matching sets of standard components. Modularity permitsfirms to increase product variety without incurringa significant adverse impact on operational performance.According to Duray et al. (2000), manufacturers that
do not involve customers in the design process or do notemploy modularity should not be considered mass customizers.On the other hand, companies that do involve thecustomer in the design, but do not exhibit modularity inmanufacturing, are also excluded. Pine et al. (1993) havestated that mass production is the counter-point for masscustomization and that standardization of products isa starting point for mass customization The review ofthe literature has shown two characteristics inherent tomass customizers.
Customer involvement. Duray et al. (2000) highlightedthat the level of customer involvement in the valuechain plays a critical role in determining the degree ofuniqueness of the product and the type of customization.
According to the researchers, the point of customer involvementin the production cycle is a key indicator of the
degree or type of customization provided. If customersare involved in the early design stages of the production
cycle, a product could be highly customized. On a simplified
production process, involvement of customers cantake place at the design, manufacture, assembly and usstages.
Modularity. Pine et al. (1993) argued that modularityis key to achieving mass customization. In the view ofBi and Zhang (2001) modularity is used to describe theuse of encapsulated units to meet the dynamic changes
being face