Alessio Trentin

Mix flexibility and volume flexibility in a build‐to‐order environment

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the factors enabling or hindering the simultaneous pursuit of volume flexibility and mix flexibility within a supply chain through the lens of a manufacturing plant seeking to implement a build‐to‐order (BTO) strategy.Design/methodology/approach – To accomplish this empirical investigation, an in‐depth case study involving a manufacturing plant and its supply chain was designed. Prior to primary and secondary data collection, this research setting had already decided to implement a BTO strategy and had, moreover, carefully assessed several practices for BTO strategy implementation, as well as their interactions.Findings – The studied case suggests that a number of approaches typically used to increase volume flexibility, actually negatively affect mix flexibility and vice versa. The existence of such trade‐offs may ultimately inhibit the implementation of a BTO strategy and this was the case in the studied company. Nevertheless, empirical evidence also suggests tha...

Overcoming the customization-responsiveness squeeze by using product configurators: Beyond anecdotal evidence

Anecdotal evidence suggests that product configurators may be crucial in improving time performance when offering customized products so as to overcome what has been termed the customization-responsiveness squeeze. Large-scale hypothesis-testing studies that either corroborate this finding or discover unpredicted boundaries of validity are still lacking, however. Our paper contributes to fill this gap by testing the positive impact of product configurator use on time performance on a sample of 238 manufacturing plants from three industries and eight countries. The results support the hypothesized impact after the effects of widely acknowledged antecedents of accelerated time performance have been removed. Implications of our findings for both research and practice are finally discussed.

Increasing the consumer-perceived benefits of a mass-customization experience through sales-configurator capabilities

Abstract The consumers experience of self-customizing a product with a sales configurator can be a source of experience-related benefits for the consumer, above and beyond the traditionally considered utility of possessing a product that better fits his/her idiosyncratic needs. Although such experience-related benefits have been found by previous studies as increasing consumers’ willingness to pay for mass-customized products, research on what characteristics sales configurators should have to increase such benefits is still in its infancy. In this paper, we argue that two such benefits (i.e., hedonic and creative-achievement benefits) increase as a sales configurator deploys, to a greater extent, the following capabilities: focused navigation, flexible navigation, user-friendly product space description, easy comparison and benefit-cost communication. Subsequently, by analyzing 675 self-customization experiences made by 75 engineering students on 30 real Web-based configurators of consumer goods, we find empirical support for all the hypothesized relationships. We conclude discussing the contribution of the study to relevant debates, its managerial implications as well as its limitations and the related opportunities for further research.

Organisation design strategies for mass customisation: An information-processing-view perspective

The need to transform the organisation for mass customisation has long been recognised in literature, but the discussion has largely relied on anecdotal evidence or case studies and has limitedly taken advantage of insights from organisation theory. In this paper, we draw on organisational information-processing theory to develop solid theoretical links between mass customisation capability and four organisation design strategies aimed at either increasing an organisations information-processing capacity or decreasing its information-processing needs. We then test the hypothesized relationships using a sample of 238 manufacturing plants from three industries and eight countries, and find that mass customisation capability is positively related to self-containment of tasks, environmental management, and use of lateral relations. We conclude by discussing implications of our results for both research and practice.

Third-party logistics providers offering form postponement services: value propositions and organisational approaches

In todays global supply chains, third-party logistics providers (3PLs) can play an important role in implementing the principle of form postponement (FP). This proposes that activities creating product variety and the associated production mix decisions are deferred along a product family manufacturing and distribution process as long as possible. While both FP and third-party logistics have increasingly drawn the attention of the academic community over the last few years, less research has been carried out on FP supported by 3PLs. The present paper empirically investigates how 3PLs can deliver value to companies offering product variety by providing FP services, defined as the carrying out of variety-creating activities on behalf of these companies close to the target markets. Our findings indicate that, through an FP service, a 3PL can give its customers two different kinds of benefits: either improved performance in serving the customers existing markets or entry into new geographical markets. Further, our results show that through the choice of the organisational solution for FP service provision, the 3PL can increase FP value by mitigating a number of disadvantages that the customer might incur in the case of in-house implementation of FP. Challenges that the 3PL needs to overcome to actually provide these potential benefits are also identified. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of our findings for both practice and research on FP.

Operationalising form postponement from a decision-making perspective

Form postponement means delaying the commitment of inventory to the final configuration of a product as long as possible. Many firms today are striving to redesign their products and/or their manufacturing and supply chain processes to implement form postponement. Opportunities for form postponement, however, are sometimes lost in the companies’ production-planning processes. By focusing on the deferring of product mix decisions in the master production scheduling process, this paper shows that form postponement opportunities can be divided into two components: one whose pursuit necessarily requires product and/or transformation process redesign, the other that can be pursued by changing the sales forecasting and master production scheduling process alone. We develop an operational procedure to identify and quantify, for a given product family, all opportunities for form postponement and their two respective components. Then, we discuss and empirically illustrate how the proposed measurement procedure may support companies in changing their decision-making routines to implement form postponement. Finally, we set future research directions on form postponement suggested by our results.

Sales configurator capabilities to avoid the product variety paradox: Construct development and validation

Sales configurators are applications designed to support potential customers in choosing, within a companys product offer, the product solution that best fits their needs. These applications can help firms avoid the risk that offering more product variety and customization in an attempt to increase sales, paradoxically results in a loss of sales. Relatively few studies, however, have focused on the characteristics sales configurators should have so as to avoid this paradox. Furthermore, empirical investigation on the effectiveness of the recommendations made by these studies has been hindered by the lack of psychometrically sound measurement items and scales. This paper conceptualizes, develops and validates five capabilities that sales configurators should deploy in order to avoid the product variety paradox: namely, focused navigation, flexible navigation, easy comparison, benefit-cost communication, and user-friendly product-space description capabilities. It is hoped that this study will provide a parsimonious measurement instrument to advance theory testing in the field. Moreover, this instrument may be a useful diagnostic and benchmarking tool for companies seeking to assess and/or improve sales configurators they use or develop.

Design for form postponement: do not overlook organization design

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of the organizational changes related to the production‐planning process that facilitate application of form postponement (FP), an increasingly popular operations‐design principle meant to alleviate the negative impact of product variety and customization on operational performance.Design/methodology/approach – To achieve the theory‐building objective, a multiple‐case study involving four cases in the machinery industry was designed. In the inductive theory‐building process, the authors borrowed from the information‐processing theory to further corroborate the internal validity and generalizability of the findings.Findings – The theory proposed by the author indicates that greater utilization of lateral relations in the production‐planning process, higher production‐planning frequency, greater degree of self‐containment of the production‐planning task, and simplification of the production planning‐related environment favor application of FP.Resear...

Supporting product configuration and form postponement by grouping components into kits: the case of MarelliMotori

With millions of possible electric motor configurations, MarelliMotori has always been pushing customisation within its product strategy. Over the last few years MarelliMotoris strategy has been challenged by the increasing pressure on costs and delivery times due to the entry of low-cost manufacturers and the proliferation of highly responsive small companies operating on a regional scale. Therefore, combining product customisation with rapid deliveries and competitive prices has become a must for MarelliMotori. To do so, MarelliMotori considered changing both the product configuration process and the material flow. The case illustrates how and why grouping components into kits has enabled both the implementation of a software-based product configuration system and the postponement of product differentiation along the material flow, thus playing a key role in enhancing MarelliMotoris mass customisation capability.

Supporting the social dimension of shopping for personalized products through online sales configurators

Mass customizers often sell personalized products through online sales configurators, also known as mass-customization toolkits. Recently, a number of mass customizers have connected their sales configurators with social software applications. This is not surprising, as social software enables an interactive and socially rich shopping experience, which makes shopping with a mass-customization toolkit more similar to retail shopping. However, research on the use of social software by mass customizers is very limited: almost all previous studies on mass-customization toolkits have focused on the dyadic interaction between a sales configurator and an isolated, potential customer. Based on an analysis of 277 real online sales configurators, the present paper identifies eight different ways in which online sales configurators can connect with social software. These different connection modalities are compared both in terms of enabled social interactions and in terms of support provided for the sales configuration task. The paper also shows that, in the analyzed sample, the level of adoption varies substantially across the different modalities and, for the same modality, across industries. A number of opportunities for future research on these sales configurator-social software connection modalities are finally outlined.