The false promise of mass customization
The false promise of mass customization
复制标题
大规模定制的虚假承诺
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2001
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
T. V. Kumaresh
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
M. Agrawal;G. Mercer;T. V. Kumaresh
按订单生产将非常昂贵且具有挑战性，其收益也不确定。但有一个更便宜的选择。二十多年来，大规模定制一直是制造业的未来，对一些制造商来说，它可能永远都是。从表面上看，大规模定制对消费者和生产商来说都是一个非常有吸引力的提议。消费者得到了价格合理、量身定制的产品，反映了他们个人对颜色、特征、功能和风格的选择。对生产商而言，他们可以减少库存和制造间接成本，消除供应链中的浪费，并获得更准确的需求信息。简而言之，这是一个双赢的提议。两项相对较新的发展推动了大规模定制的前景：首先，戴尔电脑公司和其他高科技公司根据订单生产产品所取得的成功；其次，互联网的出现。戴尔的故事现在已经很熟悉了。通过电话或万维网，客户可以从数百种不同的组件中选择他们想要的组件来配置他们所选择的计算机，戴尔只有在手头有钱时才开始生产。从汽车制造商到牙膏配方制造商等各行各业的制造商都对该公司羡慕不已，因为它们的生产需要预测，因此背负着庞大的成品和零部件库存以及滞后的现金流。第二个发展——互联网——为制造商提供了一个平台，可以从大众那里接受定制产品的订单，比如自行车、衣服、化妆品、鞋子和维生素，几乎不需要任何成本。在过去，这种定制是由技术娴熟但价格昂贵的销售人员与客户密切互动来处理的。但大规模定制并不一定适用于所有商品。例如，组装汽车比制造电脑更复杂、更困难。尽管如此，宝马（BMW）、福特汽车（Ford Motor）和通用汽车（General Motors）等汽车公司对大规模定制的一种变体——按订单生产（BTO）方式寄予厚望。他们相信，通过转换为BTO，他们可以从业务系统中获得巨大的成本，对客户的好处是无数的，并且他们在实施BTO时面临的许多困难挑战都是可以克服的。福特和通用汽车已经在几个城市为客户推出了成熟的BTO试验。北美和欧洲的其他汽车公司已经在公开声明中表示，他们将在两到三年内转向广泛的BTO系统；私下里，有人听到他们说，这种变化可能需要五到六年的时间。尽管如此，我们仍然对BTO的好处持怀疑态度。在汽车行业实施它的挑战是艰巨的，尤其是在北美，而且目前还不清楚经济上是否会奏效。从汽车制造商多年来不断改进的大规模生产（或“推动”）生产系统，到BTO（或“拉动”）系统，需要在整个汽车行业价值链中进行大量的运营和组织变革（图1）。然而，所有这些活动的回报尚不清楚。豪车买家似乎急于详细说明自己的喜好。但现在判断主流消费者是否愿意按订单生产汽车还为时过早，更不用说他们愿意为此支付多少钱了。幸运的是，致力于BTO未来的汽车制造商有一个“虚拟”的选择，可以扩大客户的选择，而不会带来真正的BTO带来的挑战。然而，这种替代方案仍将使汽车公司获得比现在更好的需求信息。如今，汽车制造商正忙着制造顾客想买的产品。对于主流的交易量建造者来说，BTO可能是他们无法承受的干扰。将时间和资产集中在低成本的虚拟替代品上是一个更好的主意，尽管商业媒体对BTO充满热情。…
Build to order will be hugely expensive and challenging, and its benefits are uncertain. But there is a cheaper alternative. For more than two decades, mass customization has been the future of manufacturinguand for some manufacturers it probably always will be. On the face of it, mass customization is a remarkably attractive proposition for consumers and producers alike. Consumers get a reasonably priced, tailor-made product reflecting their personal selection of colors, features, functions, and styles. Producers, for their part, get to reduce their inventories and manufacturing-overhead costs, to eliminate waste in their supply chains, and to obtain more accurate information about demand. In short, a win-win proposition. Two relatively recent developments have given the prospects for mass customization a boost: first, the success enjoyed by Dell Computer and other high-tech companies that build products to order and, second, the emergence of the Internet. Dell's story is by now a familiar one. Over the phone or via the World Wide Web, customers select what they want from hundreds of different components to configure the computer of their choice, which Dell doesn't begin to build until it has the money for it in hand. The company has become the envy of manufacturers of all stripes--from auto-makers to toothpaste formulators--that produce to forecast and are thus burdened with sizable finished-goods and components inventories and lagging cash flow. The second development-the Internet-gives manufacturers a platform for taking orders from a mass audience for customized products, such as bicycles, clothes, cosmetics, shoes, and vitamins, at almost no cost. In the past, customization of this kind was handled by skilled but expensive salespeople closely interacting with customers. But mass customization isn't necessarily feasible for all goods. Assembling cars, for example, is more complex and difficult than building computers. Still, auto companies such as BMW, Ford Motor, and General Motors have high hopes for the build-to-order (BTO) approach, a variant of mass customization. [1] They are convinced that the costs they can wring from their business systems by switching to BTO are enormous, that the benefits to customers are numerous, and that the many difficult challenges they face in implementing BTO can be overcome. Ford and GM have already launched experiments with full-fledged BTO for customers in a couple of cities. Other auto companies, in North America and Europe, have said in their public pronouncements that they will move to broad-based BTO systems in two to three years; privately, they have been heard to say that the change may take five or six. Nonetheless, we remain doubtful about the benefits of BTO. The challenges of implementing it in the auto industry are daunting-particularly in North America-and it isn't clear that the economics will work. Moving from a mass-manufacturing (or "push") system of production, which automakers have continually refined over the years, to a BTO (or "pull") system would require numerous operational and organizational changes throughout the auto industry value chain (Exhibit 1). Yet the payoff from all this activity is unclear. Luxury-car buyers seem eager to specify their preferences in great detail. But it is still too early to tell whether mainstream customers want their vehicles built to order, let alone how much they would be willing to pay for this. Fortunately, automakers bent on a BTO future have a "virtual" alternative that could expand the customer's choice without presenting the challenges posed by real BTO. Yet this alternative would still allow car companies to get much better information about demand than they have now. Today automakers have their hands full making products that customers want to buy. For mainstream volume builders, BTO may be a distraction that they can ill afford. Focusing time and assets on the lower-cost virtual alternative is a better idea, notwithstanding the enthusiasm of the business press for BTO. …