Abstract
Mass customization as a business strategy serves to provide for product variations while maintaining the efficiency of production. Houses are one-of-a-kind products that reflect social and cultural differences of inhabitants who live in them. True adaptation of mass customization in the housing industry demands for flexibility, that is, stability and responsiveness in producing highly customized houses. Achieving that requires smooth flow of information among and effective collaboration between customers, designers, and manufacturers. This paper presents a comprehensive framework in the adaptation of mass customization in the housing industry by delineating fundamentals and technological developments in design, customization, and manufacturing spaces. Difficulties and challenges of such an approach are discussed from both companies’ and customers’ perspectives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Davis, S.: Future Perfect. Basic Books. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1987)
Anderson, D.: Build-to-Order & Mass Customization: the Ultimate Supply Chain Management and Lean Manufacturing Strategy for Low-Cost On-Demand Production Without Forecasts or Inventory. CIM Press, Cambria (2002)
Corbusier, L.: Toward an Architecture. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2007)
Knaack, U., Chung-Klatte, S., Hasselbach, R.: Prefabricated Systems, Principles of Construction. Walter de Gruyter, Basel (2012)
Hamdi, N.: Housing Without Houses: Participation, Flexibility, Enablement. Intermediate Technology, London (1995)
Beim, A., Nielsen, J., Vibæk, K.: Three Ways of Assembling a House. Kunstakademiets Arkitektskoles Forlag, Copenhagen (2010)
Zipkin, P.: The limits of mass customization. MIT Sloan Manag. 42(3), 81–87 (2001)
Salvador, F., de Holan, P., Piller, F.: Cracking the code of mass customization. MIT Sloan Manag. Rev. 50(3), 71–79 (2009)
Meyer, M., Lehnerd, A.: The Power of Product Platform. The Free Pass, New York (1997)
Muffatto, M.: Introducing a platform strategy in product development. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 60, 145–153 (1999)
Robertson, D., Ulrich, K.: Planning for product platform. MIT Sloan Manag. Rev. 39(4), 19 (1998)
Habraken, J.: Supports: an Alternative to Mass Housing. Architectural Press, London (1972)
Richard, R.: Industrialized building systems: reproduction before automation and robotics. Autom. Constr. 14(4), 442–451 (2005)
Durmisevic, E.: Transformable Building Structures: Design for Disassembly as a Way to Introduce Sustainable Engineering to Building Design and Construction. TU, Delft (2006)
van Hinte, E., Neelen, M.: Smart Architecture. 010 Uitgeverij, Rotterdam (2003)
Ulrich, K.: The role of product architecture in manufacturing firm. Res. Policy. 24(3), 419–440 (1995)
Starr, M.: Modular production – a new concept. Harv. Bus. Rev. 43(6), 131–142 (1965)
Gomez Quesada, V., Idone, C., Meuschke, N., Teboul, N.: BoKlok, Seet BoKlok: A Joint Innovation of Skanska and IKEA. Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management (2007)
Sanoff, H.: Participatory Design: Theory and Techniques. Henry Sanoff (1990)
Niemeijer, R.: Constraints specification in architecture: a user-oriented approach for mass customization. Doctoral Thesis, Eindhoven (2011)
Hofman, E., Halman, J., Ion, R.: Variation in housing design: identifying customer preferences. Hous. Stud. 21(6), 929–943 (2006)
Mishra, M., O'Brien, M., Ku, K., Beliveau, Y.: Digitally enabled mass customization in residential construction for production home builders. In: Proceedings in the International Conference on Mass Customization and Personalization-Extreme Customization, Massachusetts and Montreal (2007)
Nahmens, I., Bindroo, V.: Is customization fruitful in industrialized homebuilding industry? J. Constr. Eng. Manag. 137(12), 1027–1035 (2011)
Duray, R., Ward, P., Milligan, G., Berry, W.: Approaches to mass customization: configurations and empirical validation. J. Oper. Manag. 18(6), 605–625 (2000)
Lampel, J., Mintzberg, H.: Customizing customization. Sloan Manag. Rev. 38(1), 21–30 (1996)
Barlow, J., Childerhouse, P., Gann, D., Hong-Minh, S., Naim, M., Ozaki, R.: Choice and delivery in housebuilding: lessons from Japan for UK housebuilders. Build. Res. Inf. 31(2), 134–145 (2003)
Simpson, T.: Product platform design and customization: status and promise. AI EDAM: Artif. Intell. Eng. Des. Anal. Manuf. 18(1), 3–20 (2004)
Friedman, A.: The Adaptable House. McGraw-Hill, Inc (2002)
Thomke, S., von Hippel, E.: Customers as innovators. Harv. Bus. Rev. 80(4), 74–81 (2002)
von Hippel, E.: User toolkits for innovation. J. Prod. Innov. Manag. 18, 247–257 (2001)
von Hippel, E., Katz, R.: Shifting innovation to users via toolkits. Manag. Sci. 48(7), 821–833 (2002)
Tseng, M., Jiao, J., Customization, M.: In: Salvendy, G. (ed.) Handbook of Industrial Engineering, 3rd edn, pp. 684–709. Wiley Publisher, New York (2007)
Sass, L.: Reconstructing Palladio’s Villas: an Analysis of Palladio’s Villa Design and Construction Process. PhD Dissertation (2000)
Duarte, J.: Customizing Mass Housing: A Discursive Grammar for Siza’s Malagueira Houses. PhD Dissertation (2001)
Johnson, L.: B-Shelves: a web-based mass customized product. Master Dissertation (2012)
Beaudin, J.: From personal experience to design: externalizing the homeowner's needs assessment process. Master Thesis (2003)
Huang, C.: Participatory Design for Prefab House: Using Internet and Query Approach of Customizing Prefabricated Houses. VDM Verlag (2008)
Lawrence, T.: Chassis+Infill: A consumer-driven, Open Source Building approach for adaptable, mass customized housing. Master Dissertation (2003)
Ma, X.: A Web-Based User-Oriented Tool for Universal Kitchen Design. Master Dissertation (2002)
Pine, J.: Mass Customization: the New Frontier in Business Competition. Harvard Business Press, Boston (1993)
Bechthold, M.: Product and process approaches. In: Piroozfar, P., Piller, F. (eds.) Mass Customization and Personalization in Architecture and Construction, pp. 78–92. Routledge, London (2013)
Richard, R.: Five degrees of industrialized building production. In: New Perspective in Industrialization in Construction – A State-of-the-Art Report (CIB Publication 329), Zurich, pp.15–27 (2010)
Gramazio, F., Kohler, M.: Digital Materiality in Architecture. Lars Muller (2008)
Salvador, F., Forza, C., Rungtusanatham, M.: How to mass customize: product architecture, sourcing configurations. Bus Horiz. 45(2), 61–69 (2002)
Ramani, K., Cunningham, R., Devanathan, S., Subramaniam, J., Patwardhan, H.: Technology review of mass customization. In: International Conference on Economic, Technical and Organizational Aspects of Product Configuration Systems, pp. 5–11 (2004)
American Institute of Architects (AIA): Integrated Project Delivery: a guide. (2007)
Garber, R.: BIM Design: Realizing the Creative Potential of Building Information Modelling. Wiley, Sussex (2014)
van Hoek, R.: Logistics and virtual integration: postponement, outsourcing and the flow of information. Int. J. Phys. Distrib. Logist. Manag. 28(7), 508–523 (1998)
Piller, F., Moeslein, K., Stotko, C.: Does mass customization pay? An economic approach to evaluate customer integration. Prod. Plan. Control. 15(4), 435–444 (2004)
Höök, M., Stehn, L.: Applicability of lean principles and practices in industrialized housing production. Constr. Manag. Econ. 26, 1091–1100 (2008)
Dellaert, B., Stremersch, S.: Marketing mass-customized products: striking a balance between utility and complexity. J. Mark. Res. 42(2), 219–227 (2005)
Kieran, S., Timberlake, J.: Refabricating Architecture. McGrow-Hill, New York (2003)
Khalili-Araghi, S., Kolarevic, B.: Captivity or flexibility: complexities in a dimensional customization system. In: Aulikki, H., Toni, O., Markkanen, P., (eds.) Complexity & Simplicity – Proceedings of the 34th eCAADe Conference, pp.633–642 (2016)
Kolarevic, B.: From mass customisation to design ‘democratisation. Archit. Des. 85(6), 48–53 (2015)
Chaszar, A.: Bridging the gap with collaborative design programs. Archit. Des. 73(5), 112–118 (2003)
Celento, D.: Innovate or perish: new technologies and architecture’s future. In: Corser, R. (ed.) Fabricating Architecture: Selected Readings in Digital Design and Manufacturing, pp. 56–83. Princeton Architectural Press, New York (2010)
Willis, D., Woodward, T.: Diminishing difficulty: mass customization and the digital production of architecture. In: Fabricating Architecture: Selected Readings in Digital Design and Manufacturing, pp. 178–213. Princeton Architectural Press, New York (2010)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this paper
Cite this paper
Khalili-Araghi, S., Kolarevic, B. (2018). Flexibility in Mass Customization of Houses. In: Hankammer, S., Nielsen, K., Piller, F., Schuh, G., Wang, N. (eds) Customization 4.0. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77556-2_35
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77556-2_35
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77555-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77556-2
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)