A term used in marketing and manufacturing, representing the use of flexible, computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output. In other words, it combines mass production processes with individual customization.
Published in Chapter:
Configurators/Choiceboards: Uses, Benefits, and Analysis of Data
Paul D. Berger (Bentley University, USA), Richard C. Hanna (Northeastern University, USA), Scott D. Swain (Northeastern University, USA), and Bruce D. Weinberg (Bentley University, USA)
Copyright: © 2010
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-611-7.ch042
Abstract
This article discusses the uses and benefits of configurator/choiceboard systems, and how analysis of data from its use can be useful to the company having such a system. Dell and other companies have greatly improved, if not perfected, the art of product customization by using a system of choiceboards or configurators (used here as interchangeable terms) that allow consumers to customize their products. A popular term for what is being accomplished by the use of choiceboards is “mass customization,” a term that not long ago may have been thought of as an oxymoron. We always had “job shops” that produced to order for individual consumers or companies. However, relatively speaking, individual customization did not occur on a large-scale basis, and was quite distinct from what was called mass production, and surely, was not routinely available online even when there was first an “online.”