Mass Customization: How Build to Order, Assemble to Order, Configure to Order, Make to Order, and Engineer to Order Manufacturers Increase Paperback – Illustrated, May 20, 2009

Book is small, quick, easy to read and understand in a short time yet great, quick, simple overview and primer on Mass Customization. i was very pleased with the amount of value in such a small package. Doubtful one would need much more on the topic unless s/he wants to get into nitty gritty implementation of Mass Customization. Few more pages on when to mass customize and when not to, or a "case study" and explanations, additional real-world examples, and images would help improve the book while making it only a few pages longer.

The content of this e-book was OK; it did not answer my questions; however, it helped me clarify what I knew and what I didn't.My complaint goes to the quality of the e-book file. There were supposed to be charts and tables that did not displayed at all on the kindle fire, which is supposed to be the ultimate e-book reader. Over all I'm happy wit the Kindle Fire, just a little let down for this only, so far, bad experience.

Perhaps it did not help that I just read  Build-to-Order & Mass Customization; The Ultimate Supply Chain Management and Lean Manufacturing Strategy for Low-Cost On-Demand Production without Forecasts or Inventory , a wonderful book on the same topic which I highly recommend. I found coverage of "Mass Customization: an Enterprise-Wide Business Strategy" to be very shallow, without a single reference to further details and full of unsupported statements which are borderline wrong. Some examples include calling Dell's approach "mass customization" (rather than "assemble-to-order"), equating build-to-order, assemble-to-order, configure-to-order, mass customization, make-to-order and engineer-to-order, etc. etc. Contents of the book seems to be jumping around randomly inside each chapter and from one chapter to another. A very disappointing purchase which I cannot recommend.

Good subject/methods overview with enough content detail to explain the what's is and how to's. For those of us who are real practitioners with real world hands on experience planning and implementing successful solutions this is a good introduction with solid "making the complex simple" content. An understanding, overview and guide. Too often books today are so detailed and deep that the reader becomes lost in the weeds of misunderstanding where the objective becomes struggling through the book instead of gaining knowledge on how to understand and execute these assemble/production methods. Manufacturing / production implementations need to result in high value deliverables and today customer focus, speed and simplicity of understanding and execution is critical.

This is a great book for its intended purpose: to introduce manufacturing company executives to the fundamentals of mass customization. As a former CFO of several Silicon Valley, publicly traded, high tech manufacturers, I can easily relate to the author's depiction of salesman "George Kluge." How many companies have salesman who "game" the system to pad their own wallets via a revenue-based commission system, while creating gaping margin leaks for the enterprise and its shareholders? After introducing the basic concepts of mass customization (and each of its various manifestations), Chapter 4 really nails it with a checklist for executives analyzing whether their mass customization goals have been achieved. The appendices include sample, albeit simplistic, examples of various process steps. I would also suggest readers who have seen Professor Netessine's critical review of this book in this space to consider the source. As Mr. Gardner clearly states right up front on page 2 of the book, its intended audience is business people who are neophytes to the concepts involved and need a primer. Clearly, for an academic schooled in the deep theory and practice of Operations Management, this book may be "shallow." Those of us who spend our days in the trenches of daily business operations in all of its breadth and multi-directional challenges need this kind of help.

This is an excellent roadmap that is significantly aligned with process. The development and implementation of mass customization is a lengthy and delicate process. The author's discussion on leveraging configuration knowledge is right on the mark. Too often companies and consultants try to start fresh and not take advantage of current knownledge, processes and lessons learned. The authors overview of contrasting strategies is on target since most artcles do not give the reader and an opportunity to compare and contrast the various aspects of the strategy. The chapter on "Deciding What to Offer the Marketplace" is well done and provides the reader with very good diagram in helping management to decide whether or not there is "value in offering a new feature or option" The book is easy reading and provides the reader with a many good ideas that can add value to his or her mass customization system.

I've spent years leading the development of technical solutions that deliver on the promise of mass customization. David Gardner's book addresses many of the business and structural considerations required for enterprises to be successful with this paradigm.This book effectively addresses both tangible examples and general business concepts. I've not read all of the books on this topic, so I'm in no position to compare them. However, this book was a very informative, practical guide to delivering customer directed offerings in today's complex marketplace.

The task of implementing mass customization projects is challenging and Dave Gardner's book provides an excellent roadmap for executives to follow. Anyone approaching similar projects should make the book mandatory reading not just for implementation team members, but for anybody directly or indirectly involved with the project. The book is definitely an excellent gateway into the complexity of mass customization.

As figuras, gráficos e tabelas não estão disponiveis. Há um bug no Kindle.There are no pictures, graphs and table. There is a bug using Kindle or Android.

No pictures, graphs available