ABSTRACT
The demand for the largest possible variety of products, whether architectural, consumer or industrial products, has clearly increased over the past decades. Depending on the product complexity and the need for product variation different production strategies, ranging from craft production to mass production, can be taken. Advances in manufacturing technology combined with the rapid introduction of information technology into the manufacturing world in the 1990s brought about mass customisation as a different business model that claims to resolve the dilemma between variety and high production volumes. The uptake of this new business model has been different in architecture, manufacturing and service industries. This chapter looks at the products and processes of highly deterministic mass production, as the origin of today’s industrialised economies. Next, strategies of how to achieve a limited amount of product variety with standard architectural and consumer products are reviewed. Then the product and process view will be extended to mass customisation, where the chapter includes an overview of mass customisation as a business strategy for the future.
