Industry 4.0: a way from mass customization to mass personalization production

Although mass customization, which utilizes modularization to simultaneously increase product variety and maintain mass production (MP) efficiency, has become a trend in recent times, there are some limitations to mass customization. Firstly, customers do not participate wholeheartedly in the design phase. Secondly, potential combinations are predetermined by designers. Thirdly, the concept of mass customization is not necessary to satisfy individual requirements and is not capable of providing personalized services and goods. Industry 4.0 is a collective term for technologies and concepts of value chain organization. Based on the technological concepts of radio frequency identification, cyber-physical system, the Internet of things, Internet of service, and data mining, Industry 4.0 will enable novel forms of personalization. Direct customer input to design will enable companies to increasingly produce customized products with shorter cycle-times and lower costs than those associated with standardization and MP. The producer and the customer will share in the new value created. To overcome the gaps between mass customization and mass personalization, this paper presents a framework for mass personalization production based on the concepts of Industry 4.0. Several industrial practices and a lab demonstration show how we can realize mass personalization.