6th North American Conference on Industrial Engineering & Operations Management Monterrey, Mexico, November 3-5,2021
Achieving Mass Customization Through Integrating Human Factors in Product Platform Concepts During Product Design
Oscar Ming Liu, Venkat Allada
Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Department
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Rolla, MO 65401,USA
mmlncp@mst.edu, allada@mst.edu
Abstract
There are two popular ways to achieve mass customization of products: (a) creating design variants for various market segments using a common platform and, (b) considering human factors considerations so that the products fit the human capabilities and needs. The product platforming concept based on commonality of sub-systems/components across product variants has widely been used in industries to achieve the economies of scale. Many industries identify critical human factors considerations and address them during the early design stages. However, the integration of these two concepts to achieve greater mass customization is not explicitly discussed in the literature. This paper presents a general outline of the need to have such an integrated framework while designing mass customized products.
Keywords: Product Platform, Human Factors, Mass Customization