ZEMCH 2019 International Conference Proceedings April.2020 | Page 454
a business unit dedicated to mass customising housing projects in different levels which is considered
as part of their competitive advantage in the market, a key element for its selection to caring out the
empirical study. A relatively new product line in which the company offers a limited solution space to
fulfil customer’s choices is the focus of this research. Within this context, the productivity‐flexibility
trade‐off must be managed carefully, in order to improve the value generation to customers without
substantially increasing costs and lead time.
Multiple sources of evidence were used during this empirical study: (i) 9 semi‐structured
interviews with architects, managers and other professionals from company P; (ii) 2 open‐ended
interviews with managers involved in the customisation process; (iii) analysis of documents related to
the customisation of residential projects, related to different solution spaces offered; (iv) participant
observation in one customisation event promoted by the company; and (v) 3 meetings to discuss the
customisation process map, improvement opportunities and research findings two with only the
architects from customisation team addressing the all of those subjects and one with the team, manager
and other departments representatives to discuss the research findings.
The third stage of the study involved analysis and reflection of the research findings. The main
theoretical contributions of this study are related to the proposal of new concepts and refinement of
existing ones for supporting decision making regarding MC strategies. During this stage the usefulness
of the research outcomes was assessed based on the following criteria: (i) support the understanding of
the adopted strategy and concepts related to MC; (ii) support the decision making and improve the
strategy; (iii) identify enablers and barriers to the implementation of practices. The three meetings with
company P mentioned before were the sources of evidence that supported the development of this
stage. For example, in the first meeting, many improvement opportunities identified were reinforced,
and new ones emerged, supporting a better understanding of the strategy and providing examples of
enablers and barriers. The other two meetings were focused on discussing research findings and
portrayed how the solution can support the decision making, stating a way forward for the company.
3. Results
3.1. Identification of MC Practices In The Literature
Several MC practices for house‐building have been presented in the literature (e.g.[4,9,11,14–16]).
Approximately 58 practices related to customer integration and core decision categories (i.e.: related to
the definition of the mass customisation strategy) in the construction industry were identified in this
literature review. These practices were preliminarily classified into a set of decision categories (see
examples in table 1) in order to understand how can they support the implementation and
improvement of the MC strategy. The main decision categories adopted so far in this investigation are
presented below. Some of them were adapted from Rocha [9], while others emerged as part of the
literature review carried out in this investigation.
The three decision categories for customer integration are: (i) Visualisation Approaches [9] (ii)
Configuration Sequence [9]) (iii) Customer interaction and relationship. Visualisation approaches are
concerned with the definition of how and to whom (i.e. customer, company or both) customisation
units will be displayed, and consequently to the existing customer‐company interface [9]. The
configuration sequence decision category involves the establishment of the sequence of customisation
units or decisions to be made by customers in the product configuration process in order to define
variants [9]. This decision category has not been much discussed in the literature, so there were no
related practices identified. The customisation level and the number of units’ available have a strong
influence on that sequence. Finally, there is a need to define how companies will interact with their
customers, when and for which purpose, and establish a trustworthy relationship with them, during
the development and configuration process. For that reason, this investigation proposes the customer
interaction and relationship decision category.
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