大規模定制中消費偏好測量準確度對定製品品質的影響研究

Abstract

As they enter the 21st century, modern enterprises face unprecedentedly challenging environmental changes. Along with ever-increasing personalized and diversified consumer demands, the current mass production mode, which is based on economies of scale for high volume production, has steadily become less efficient in coping with growing competition and evolving market needs of enterprises. With the growth of Internet information and intelligent manufacturing technology, a new kind of future-oriented industrial paradigm called Mass Customization (MC) has been emerging. Mass customization is an organic integration of mass and customized production aimed at solving the fundamental contradiction between mass standardized production and consumers’ personalized demands by producing customized products at the low cost of mass production. MC is becoming the mainstream production mode of the 21st century recognized by both academia and industry. However, many enterprises have encountered a range of problems to be resolved in the actual practice of mass customization. These issues have become an important source of academic research.

Accordingly, this research is related to the following three problems in MC:
Firstly, MC is a customer-oriented and order-driven production mode. The enterprise needs to measure the consumer’s preference as clearly as possible before production. The accuracy of the Consumer Preference Measurement ( CPM ) will have direct impact on the success of the enterprise’ s MC implementation. So, how does CPM affect the final quality of mass customized products ? Which internal functional mechanism is involved?

Secondly, from the perspective of the production process, personalized orders are delivered to customers through factories utilizing the flexible production advantages of intelligent manufacturing. CPM is the process of order generation, while manufacturing is the process of order realization. So, what is the functional mechanism of the manufacturing process inter-positioned between CPM and the quality of mass customized products ?

Lastly, CPM needs Consumer Participation (CP). There are different levels of Consumer participation. How do the different levels of CP affect the MC process ?

Based on the above problems, this research studied the effects of CPM on the quality of mass customized products from the intelligent manufacturing perspective by integrating CPM and CP theories as well as introducing another two constructs, namely Flexibility of Manufacturing (FM) and Consumer Participation (CP). After investigating the effects of MF and CP separately as mediator variable and moderator variable, respectively, this research put forward a series of hypotheses and formulated a Structural Equation Model ( SEM ) with four variables such as CPM, FM, CP and the quality of mass customized products. During the empirical research, field investigations and questionnaire surveys were conducted for data collection. SPSS was used to analyze the data and verify the intervariable effects hypothesized in the SEM.

The main conclusions of this research include:
Firstly, CPM has significant positive effects on the quality of mass customized products, e.g., the more accurate the CPM, the higher the final product quality. The primary implication for business practice is that the MC enterprise needs to maximize the external product variety through more reasonable modular production design, cover consumer demands to the extent possible, and offer back-up contents for the external forms of measurement as adequately as possible. This is to create more effective foundational conditions to improve the accuracy of CPM and ultimately improve product quality.

Secondly, FM is the mediator between CPM and the quality of mass customized products. The modularity includes modular decomposition and integration according to Modular Theory. In this research CPM is regarded as modular decomposition while manufacturing is regarded as modular integration. Modular decomposition has positive effects on modular integration, all of which affects final product quality. Product quality can be improved only when modular decomposition matches modular integration. The instructive contribution of this research to business practices is that enterprises’ efforts to improve product modular design should be based on the basis of their production capability, because customized orders are realized through manufacturing. Even though CPM can be accurate enough, if it does not match FM, product quality still cannot be improved. Instead, a mismatch may lead to negative impact on quality.

Thirdly, CP is the moderator between CPM and FM. CP is divided into participation at the order placement stage and participation after order placement. As an external variable, CP would reduce the positive correlation between CPM and FM by disturbing their matching equilibrium. Business practices can be enlightened by these findings in the sense that the enterprises should adopt a cautious attitude based on proper encouragement to CP，and keep the CP level within a controllable scope through proper guidance, so as to avoid an excess of discrete consumer demands which create negative turbulence within the whole manufacturing system, ultimately culminating in diminution of quality.

The practical significance of this research includes:
Firstly, at the strategic level, through clarifying the mechanism and essence of MC , this research dynamically reveals the reasons which hinder the enterprises’ successful transformation to MC, and offers proper suggestions and inspiration for implementation of new strategic approaches within MC enterprises.

Secondly, at the operational level, this research empowers MC enterprises to thoroughly understand the functional mechanisms of CPM and CP during the mass customization process, thus enabling enterprises to formulate optimal CPM and CP strategies so as to maximally improve product quality.

Date of Award	26 Jun 2020
Original language	Chinese (Traditional)
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Zhilin YANG (Supervisor) & Mingjie Rui (External Supervisor)