As diversification is quickly increasing, industries are making tremendous efforts to cope with it. But this paper points out that these efforts are too much producer-centric.
Our customers are not passive consumers as most industries assume. They are very active and would like to customize our products to their own needs and to their preferences. We should note that this act of customization is deeply associated with our basic need of self actualization. That is why their requirements are diversifying. We have to change our product development much more to customer-centric.
New emerging technologies such as 3D printers enable them to get involved in product design and manufacturing. But if we consider the capabilities of the present states of these technologies and expertise of our customers, it is much easier to realize such customer-centric product development, if we extract the feature parts or feature points from a product that relate to personalization and let our customers develop them with the help of us, experts. The parts that do not substantially contribute to personalization may be developed as a common platform and these parts can be developed by experts without customer’s involvements. In this way, customers would feel they are actualizing themselves and would be more satisfied.
Product design and manufacturing system operations: An integrated approach for product customization