Mass Customization in the House Building Industry: Literature Review and Research Directions

Abstract

Mass customization is a manufacturing paradigm that enables customized and personalized design at a cost near mass production. Mass customization's ability to lower unit cost, increase quality, and shorten project duration for customized offerings is considered highly relevant for tomorrow's house building industry. Therefore, through a literature review, this research investigates state-of-the-art in mass customization in the house building industry from four perspectives: (1) mass customization in the house building industry, (2) modular and off-site construction, (3) construction supply chains, and (4) customer satisfaction. It is concluded that a great potential exists for applying mass customization in the house building industry. However, despite its potential, research on mass customization in the house building industry is sparse. In particular, research on developing the solution space and choice navigation tools is limited in this industry.

A Customer Integration Framework for the Development of Mass Customised Housing Projects

“…In the current scenario of the house building industry, there is a fierce market competition in different countries, primarily concerned with costs, demanding strategies to increase productivity [1,2] and, at the same time, to consider customers heterogeneous demands [3]. Understanding customers' needs and preferences is a challenge due to their changing lifestyles and different family structures [4][5][6].…”

“…Mass customisation (MC) is a strategy that aims to fulfil customer requirements [11][12][13], and, at the same time, achieve high efficiency and competitive advantage [2,11], through flexible processes and supply chain integration [1,14]. Therefore, companies combine elements of mass and craft production to improve value generation for specific market segments [15][16][17].…”

“…In the house building industry, the implementation of MC is still latent [1,25], sparse and more focused on operations [1]. A critical challenge for the adoption of MC in housing is capturing customers' requirements [3,14,[25][26][27], and establishing a balance between offering variety and achieving efficiency and, consequently, housing affordability [1,9,25,27].…”

“…In the house building industry, the implementation of MC is still latent [1,25], sparse and more focused on operations [1]. A critical challenge for the adoption of MC in housing is capturing customers' requirements [3,14,[25][26][27], and establishing a balance between offering variety and achieving efficiency and, consequently, housing affordability [1,9,25,27]. Several research opportunities on this topic have been pointed out in the literature, such as the definition of solution spaces, and the support to customers' decision-making during the configuration process [1][2][3]22,25].…”

“…A critical challenge for the adoption of MC in housing is capturing customers' requirements [3,14,[25][26][27], and establishing a balance between offering variety and achieving efficiency and, consequently, housing affordability [1,9,25,27]. Several research opportunities on this topic have been pointed out in the literature, such as the definition of solution spaces, and the support to customers' decision-making during the configuration process [1][2][3]22,25]. However, Khalili-Araghi and Kolarevic [3] suggest that new methods for customer integration are needed to reduce the trade-offs between customers perceived value and the complexity that results from customisation.…”