The video brings up the term of mass customization which is created by Stan Davis twenty years ago. He explains the basic meaning of mass customization and its chanllenges.

Matti Sievanen states that customization is a concept about designing differentiated products to satisfy each customer’s requirements and needs. Mass customization related to the ability to provide individual designed products and services to each consumer through high process flexibility and integration. The business concept provides great opportunities for a company’s development. However, any great idea has drawbacks. Companies also face significant challenges, when they are selling customized products. The paper which is named What is Customization? explains the meaning of customization in details and illustrates its advantages and disadvantages.

Currently, customization is becoming a common and popular term in marketing or other business area. Many companies adopted this concept and designed customized products to satisfy individual customers’ specific needs successfully.  For example, NIKEiD website provides a channel for customers to design their own Nike shoes.Dell is another company selling customized computers. Mass customization obliviously increases individual customer’s satisfaction and sales for a company. Additionally, customized products assist a company to avoid price competition because of products’ uniqueness. However, customization also involved with some challenges. Here are two short videos which illustrates the challenges on customization from management point of views. Both Mike Gray from Dell in supply chain management area and Joshua Young from Nike give their thought about customization. They also mention what their company do to deal with those challenges.  

Dell:   

Nike:

From a manufacture’s point of view, producing customized products need extra inspection and increases in throughput time. Customization is also associated with low volume and high variety of products which create a great challenge to manufactures. For instance, when a customer designs a customized product to meet his or her requirements, they might only purchase one or few items. If 200 customers want their own customized products, it will end with 200 different styles of products.

In conclusion, manufactures have to face their challenges and overcome obstacles on customization in order to increass their sales, maximize their profits and creat more value for customers. If they can deal with those shortages, they will be succeed in the war of mass customization.