Production Planning and Control for Mass Customization – A Review of Enabling Technologies

Abstract

Production planning and control (PPC) is critical to the success of mass customization (MC). It ensures production systems fulfill individual customer orders while meeting specifications, remaining within budget, and delivering on time. Though the objectives of PPC for MC remain the same as for conventional production, the highly diversified customer orders create new challenges: (1) difficulties in forecasting, (2) altered economies of scale, and (3) shortened lead time. This review chapter addresses these challenges by surveying literature with relevant topics that can potentially enable MC to meet these challenges. It is concluded with an outline of research gaps and opportunities for future work.