Mass Customization and Sustainability: industrial implementation and assessment framework

Abstract

To adapt to global competitive pressures, modern industries must develop methods and enabling technologies towards a personalized, customer oriented and sustainable manufacturing. This statement is well understood by many companies, shared by policy maker at the European Commission and empowered by the current and future funding programmes for industrial research (FP7 and Horizon2020). This vision points out two key concepts whose impact on manufacturing is complex and interdepended: Customization and Sustainability. The capability to produce personalized goods, with near mass production efficiency, goes widely by the name of Mass-Customization (MC). A key question to be addressed is whether Mass Customization, can be regarded as one of the main driving forces to achieve effective Sustainability, and thus a key enabler to implement this envisioned personalized sustainable production, or a burden. This work is meant first to provide the theoretical background and practical implementation guidelines to comprehend and apply Mass-Customization. It will then provide a comprehensive handbook to understand and measure Sustainability. Eventually it will analyse the two concepts of mass customization and sustainability side by side, to lay a meaningful context towards the definition of a framework for their actual confrontation.