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Mass Customization *****
- The New Frontier in Business Competition

B. Joseph Pine II, 1993, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass.

ISBN 0-87584-372-7

This book was written at the same time as Peppers' and Rogers' first book and the two sets of authors have collaborated over the years, writing joint presentations and presenting together. Peppers' and Rogers' give a whole chapter to Mass Customisation in their latest book because it is a key manufacturing technique for enabling one to one marketing to deliver unique products at a mass produced cost.

Whereas the One to One books have a marketing emphasis, Pine's book is very much one of economics and the decline of the American competitiveness. Sub-titled: The New Frontier in Business Competition, he reviews the history of production in American, particularly this century and its foundation of the mass production system. It is very much based on academic and field research, with a rather large appendix (35 pages) devoted to his research on market turbulence that is then followed by 22 pages of chapter notes in small type.

Nether-the-less, it is a readable book that introduces some useful and understandable models:
 

• The Paradigm of Mass Production as a Complete Dynamic System Feedback Loop
• The New Paradigm of Mass Customisation as a Dynamic System Feedback Loop
• Market Turbulence Factors - which you can use to map your own industry.
• The Old vs New Competition, comparing the roles and activities of different business functions.
• The Product - Process Change Matrix
• Structural Innovations to Transform Organisations for Mass Customisation
• The Limitations to the Feedback Loop of Mass Customisation

This book is not just about industries manufacturing goods but also covers the service sector such as insurance and banking. it outlines how to create a strategy based on mass customisation, and then outlines 5 methods for achieving the strategic goal:
 

• Customising services around standardised product and services
• Creating customisable product and services
• Providing point-of-delivery customisation
• Provide quick response throughout the value chain
• Modularise components to customise end products and services.

Organisational transformational aspect are not forgotten with its emphasis on people and organisational and even industry learning (this is 1993!). The book concludes with an interesting chapter exploring the limitations and shocks to Mass Customisation and how to minimise them, and looks at how virtual organisations might create a fluid, adaptable response. This is a book whose time has now come.