Outline of the Book
Part I, "The Shift from Mass Production to Mass Customization," provides the what and why of this new frontier. Chapter 1 begins with a story that will seem familiar to all-but with a twist-and introduces the concept. Chapter 2 brieflr discusses the history of production to explain how we arrived at where we are today, and shows that Mass Production is a system with inherent limits. Reraching these limits over the past twenty or thirty years led to declining competitiveness for many companies and for America as a whole.
Chapter 3 begins with a discussion of a number of industries to see how companies have responded to these limits and shows how these responses have coalesced into the new system of management, Mass Customization. Chapter 4 explains why increased turbulence in an industry indicates that it should shift from Mass Production to Mass Customization and provides a tool with which you can determine if your company needs to make this shift.
Chapter 5 discusses how the practitioners of Mass Production focused on common themes that naturally resulted in a number of detrimental effectal effects that left them open to new ofrms of competition. Chapter 6 describes these newforms and shows how companies discovered Mass Customization by focusing on different themes with correspondinf positive effects.
Part 2, "Exploring the New Frontier in Business Competition," provides the how of Mass Customization. Chapter 7 offers a number of case histories of businesses that are shifting to this new system of management to show you how your company-depending on its circumstances-can also make this shift. Chapter 8 describes the five basic methods of mass-producing individually customized goods and services, with many examples and guidelines for how to use each method. Chapter 9 expilains how companies are focusing on re-engineering their processes to achieve hogh variety and customization and provides a progression of strcutural innovations that can be used to transform the organization for a more turbulent world. Finally, Chapter 10 provides the limits to the system of Mass Customization to make you aware of the dangers that may exist, and speculates on what the landscape of business competition will look like in the future as more companies enter theb new frontier.
Part 1 The Shift from Mass Production to Mass Customization
Part 2 Exploring the New Frontier in Business Competition