Knowledge-intensive services: New leader of production stages?

Abstract

At the end of the previous century we were introduced to the notion of mass customization - an approach to manufacturing that synchronizes the benefits of mass production to the benefits of tailoring each product to an individual?s requirements. The underlying ?technologies? that support mass customization are a combination of modular design approaches and information technology. Modular design allows us to create a very large number of varieties of a particular product with varying characteristics. Tailoring products to individual requirements means having detailed information about individual customer requirements and the knowledge. This allows us to identify how to satisfy them.