ZEMCH 2019 International Conference Proceedings April.2020 | Page 453
1. Introduction
Mass Customisation (MC) is a business strategy that aims to deliver products and services that
fulfil customers’ needs, potentially adding value, while maintaining efficiency similar to mass
production, through flexible processes and structure and integrating the supply chain [1,2]. In the
house‐building context, the main challenges for companies to implement MC are capturing customers’
requirements [3–5] and finding the balance between offering housing variety and maintaining
affordability [5]. Several studies have proposed ways to overcome this challenge in manufacturing
during the last two decades. Furthermore, previous research suggests that the implementation of MC
relies on product development transformations by the combination of different practices that enable
the systematic consideration of customers’ requirements and potential cost savings [6–8].
According to Rocha [9] the definition of a strategy relies on a set of decisions regarding specific
areas relevant for MC, namely decision categories. Such decisions guide the selection of practices to
operationalise the MC strategy. Practices are methods, tools, techniques, which can be combined to
improve the performance of tasks or solve problems, supporting the introduction of these changes in
the product development process [6]. Moreover, practices represent methods and techniques that have
been successfully applied in real‐life situations, which can be adapted to other companies facing similar
challenges [10].
The success of an MC strategy depends on the alignment of three different areas: Product Design
and Operations and Customer Integration [7,9,11]. Rocha [9] argues that the definition of the MC starts
through decisions related to the core categories, which outline the scope of MC strategy, and then move
to other decisions related to those areas. According to Piller et al. [8], customer integration can be
regarded as a way to generate value, where customers take part in specific activities and stages of the
development process, such as configuration, product specification and co‐design. Furthermore,
customer integration is concerned with understanding the demand for customisation by capturing
customers’ requirements and translating them into product specifications, customer‐supplier
interaction process, tools and the solution space definition [7,9]. The extent of integration depends on
the level of customisation [8], which refers to how companies will satisfy different markets through the
value chain [2], varying the configuration from a set of pre‐defined customisation units to co‐design of
the product.
The aim of this paper is to identify and understand the underlying ideas of core and customer
integration practices for mass customisation of housing projects. More specifically, some of the concepts
used for understanding MC in manufacturing have been adapted to the context of the house building
industry.
2. Research Method
Design science research (DSR) was the methodological approach adopted in this research work. It
aims to build innovative solution concepts for classes of real problems and, at the same time, make
scientific contributions to a specific field of knowledge [12,13]. Thus, the practical problem addressed
in this investigation was how construction companies could improve value generation through
customer integration in mass customised residential projects.
The research process was divided into three stages: (i) understand the problem and identify MC
practices in the literature; (ii) assess the application of MC practices in a house‐building company; (iii)
analysis and reflection. Firstly, a set of practices was identified in a literature review focused on mass
customisation in the construction industry. Those practices were identified from academic publications,
and further categorised according to core functional areas in the companies, and grouped into MC
decision categories identified, refined and proposed.
Subsequently, an empirical study was carried out in close collaboration with a house‐building
company from Porto Alegre, Brazil (Company P). This company has over 20 years of experience and
delivers projects mostly for the upper‐middle and middle‐class residential segments. This company has
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