Magazine Article

Improving customer satisfaction through mass customization

Milligan, Glenn W, Duray, Rebecca

1999

Overview

A critical issue in quality is the problem of incorporating the voice of the customer into the design, production, and after-market support of products and services. A number of techniques have been used to facilitate external customer input into the design phase of product development. These include surveys, focus groups and customer interviews. Actual customer purchase decisions, the ultimate measure of customer preferences, are far more revealing than such traditional soft measures. Thus, the problem is how to configure an organization to capture the customer's design preferences at the time of purchase. This can be done through a mass-customization manufacturing system. Mass customization blends the market advantages of customized products with the economies of scale achieved through mass production. Customer entry into the manufacturing cycle can occur at several points: 1. design, 2. fabrication, 3. assembly, or 4. post-production.

• Publisher: American Society for Quality
• Subject: Advantages / Competition / Competitive advantage / Customer feedback / Customer satisfaction / Customers / Customization / Manufacturing / Marketing / Minivans / Product design / Product development / Purchase orders