In today's competitive environment, manufacturing and service companies are intensifying their customization processes. Customization means companies must meet the challenge of providing individualized products and services, without introducing high costs. Therefore, companies must address both customization and cost factors to gain a competitive advantage. While product customization is the manufacturing of products according to individual customer needs, it does not involve any focus on the cost perspective. Information and Management Systems for Product Customization will concentrate on both product customization and costs' efficiency, which is termed as mass customization. Moreover, mass customization with its multi-dimensions is the new business paradigm challenging today's manufacturing companies.

Intends to provide basic approaches for coping with the main problems in main customization, concerning the optimal product assortment to be offered to customers and the product variants to be selected for a particular customer during the interaction process Result of a multi-year research project on the "Modeling, Planning, and Assessment of Business Transformation Processes in the Area of Mass Customization" Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext
Dr. Thorsten Blecker promovierte am Lehrstuhl von Prof. Dr. Bernd Kaluza an der Universität GH in Duisburg. Er arbeitet derzeit als Universitätsassistent am Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaften mit den Schwerpunkten Produktions-, Logistik- und Umweltmanagement am Lehrstuhl von Prof. Dr. Bernd Kaluza der Universität in Klagenfurt.

Inhalt
Fundamentals of Product Customization.- Product Customization: Theoretical Basics.- Mass Customization and Complexity.- A Customers' Needs Model for Mass Customization.- An IT Infrastructure for Effective and Efficient Product Customization.- Customer Oriented Interaction Systems.- A Multi-agent System for Coping with Variety Induced Complexity.- Implementation Scenarios of the Information Systems.- Concepts for Implementing an Efficient Product Customization.- Product Modularity in Mass Customization.- Key Metrics System Based Management Tool for Variety Steering and Complexity Evaluation.- Conclusions.