Mass customization is considered as a viable business strategy for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to increase their growth and profitability. However, in operations management literature, most of the research on mass customization is geared towards large enterprises while there is little guidance for SMEs in its implementation. Without proper guidance, implementing mass customization in SMEs poses many challenges. The product variety increases which increases complexity in products and production process. Besides, due to high variety the manufacturing systems face different types of recurring disturbances from multiple sources that affect the planned production operations with adverse effect on performance. Nonetheless, successful implementation of mass customization requires an appropriate and responsive order fulfilment process capable not only to meet the differentiated customer needs but also to cope with different types of recurring disturbances that may arise at different times, different places in relation to stages in the order fulfilment process, and with different intensity. How such process is developed and maintained may differ among large enterprises and SMEs mainly due SME specific factors such as low sales volume, limited organizational and technological resources, close customer interaction and high demand variability. Therefore, this research aims to understand and explain how responsiveness in the order fulfilment process can be achieved for successful implementation of mass customization in SMEs. For this purpose, the thesis investigates two key aspects: i) designing an appropriate order fulfilment process for mass customization in SMEs; ii) developing the Dynamic Response Capabilities (DRCs) to cope with different types of recurring disturbances arising along the order fulfilment process. The first aspect, designing an appropriate order fulfilment process for mass customization in SMEs, aims at setting the scope of the research work. For this purpose, the research particularly focuses on Assemble-to-Order (ATO) fulfilment strategy for catalogue mode of mass customization in SMEs. To design the order fulfilment process under ATO fulfilment strategy two key elements are identified from literature: i) Workload Control (WLC) is considered as a relevant method for SMEs to plan, prioritize, and coordinate order fulfilment activities starting from the order enquiry/entry stage; ii) similarly, based on the volume-variety requirements within SME context, six shop configuration types have been considered as relevant for SMEs to structure the order fulfilment activities. The second aspect-developing the DRCs to address recurring disturbances arising along the order fulfilment process, which is the core contribution of this thesis-, aims to formalize a framework that can be used as a guiding tool to develop DRCs of the manufacturing system in SME context. This research defines DRCs as the abilities to readjust the planned operating parameters of workload, capacity, and lead time, in the wake of...