Collaboration is critical to building the Knowledge Economy, and considerable work is being carried out not just in industry, but also in government and academic research circles to address the often difficult technical, social and legal challenges that cross-organizational collaboration demands in modern society and a post-industrial age. Usability, interoperability and secure identity management are no longer simply research challenges - they define what consumers expect in today's fast-moving collaborative world. One of the most difficult challenges of commercialization today is identifying aspects of solutions that are universal in appeal, while addressing local, national or regional differences that can make or break the successful launch of ICT-based or ICT-enabled products and services. This book brings together a comprehensive collection of over 200 contributions on commercial, government or societal exploitation of the Internet and ICT, representing cutting edge research, innovation and good practice from five continents. The strong emphasis on cross border collaboration and adaptation of innovative research results around the world augurs well for the continued development of the European Research Area.

Collaboration and the knowledge economy : issues, applications, case studies

Introduced nearly 25 years ago, the paradigm of mass customization (MC) has largely not lived up to its promise. Despite great strides in information technology, engineering design practice and manufacturing production, the necessary process innovations that can produce products and systems with sufficient customization and economic efficiency have yet to be found in wide application. In this paper, the state-of-the-art in MC is explored in the context of an envisioned MC development process for both the firm and the customer. Specifically, 130 references are reviewed within the process frameworks (Sect. 3) and/or to highlight opportunities for future development in MC (Sect. 4) based on the review. This review yields opportunities in four primary areas that challenge MC development: (1) customer needs and preference assessment tools, (2) approaches for requirement specification and conceptual design, (3) insights from methodologies focused on the development of durable MC goods and (4) enhancements in information mapping and handling.

A review of mass customization across marketing, engineering and distribution domains toward development of a process framework

The key challenge for mastering high uncertainty of both demand and supply is to attune products and business processes in the entire supply chain continuously to customer requirements. Product configurators have proven to be powerful tools for managing demand uncertainty. This paper assesses how configurators can be used for combined product and process configuration in order to support mastering high uncertainty of both supply and demand. It defines the dependence between product and process configuration in a typology of interdependencies. The addressed dependences go beyond the definition phase and also include the effects of unforeseen backend events during configuration and execution. Based on a case study in the Dutch flower industry, a conceptual architecture is proposed for coordination of these interdependencies and development strategies are identified.

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Mastering demand and supply uncertainty with combined product and process configuration

Mass customization (MC), as an operations program to satisfy target consumers by offering personalized products or services, has attracted substantial attention from both the industry and academia. Under this program, one of the most important issues is an efficient management of the related inventories, including the work-in-process inventories, standard items, and the customized items, which can ultimately contribute to a profitable business for the companies who have launched MC. This paper, therefore, focuses on reviewing the mass customization based literature and identifying various methods to effectively manage inventory for MC schemes. In addition to regular inventory management, with the increasing emphasis on corporate social responsibility, MC companies are required to devote more effort to the proper management of leftover and returned inventories under MC. This paper, hence, examines MC inventory management in both forward and reverse logistics. Findings from this review provide a guideline to operations managers on inventory management improvement in their MC operations. Future research opportunities related to MC inventory management, such as supply chain coordination and risk management, are discussed.

Inventory Management in Mass Customization Operations: A Review

ERP systems are the backbone of global supply chain, while their success and failure determines the fate of the business. With enormous competition and ever increasing challenges in boundless trading, the IT linkages and E-Business involve extensive customization. There are many researches on the implementation facilitators and barriers in all types of organizations throughout the world but limited literature can be found in work specific to Pakistan. This study brings out the critical factors that drive a successful ERP system in Pakistan and also discusses the pitfalls to be avoided in order to prevent a disaster. Through this study, the critical success factors and the main challenges for implementation of ERP in Pakistani organizations have been recognized. In this way, suggested to localize for ERP implementation in Pakistani organizations.

Enterprise resource planning (erp) implementation in pakistani enterprises: critical success factors and challenges

This paper analyses the shortage of traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in the current dynamic and competitive enterprise environment. The new-generation ERP system needs to be frequently customized with low cost, high quality and efficiency, as is similar to the product of mass customization (MC). Owing to this kind of similarity, an implementation framework of ERP with MC principles (MC-ERP) is proposed based on the three fundamental principles of MC. An enterprise modelling-based enterprise total solution, which is the starting point of this framework, is introduced. In order to solve the function deployment approach, which is a key technology of the framework, an approach based on quality function deployment methodology is also discussed. For realization and validation, the architecture of a toolset for implementing MC-ERP is finally proposed, and the enterprise modelling tool, the kernel of this toolset, has been developed.

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Y. Zhao

Papers

Implementation approach of ERP with mass customization