MC 4.0 status in SMEs

Information

Information on Mass Customization (MC) in SMEs is extremely limited. The MC 4.0 project collected original data on the implementation of MC in Austrian and Italian SMEs by surveying 120 SMEs that offer product variety and customization to assess their current level of MC capability and their level of adoption of the MC 4.0 levers.

The radar chart indicates the status of SMEs on the various facets of MC capability. Let’s remember that a company reaches a high value of MC capability if it offers product variety and customization without penalizing costs, quality and speed. This includes also to preserve volumes in internal processes and to help customers to choose among the various offered possibilities.  

In the radar, the numbers indicaterespectively that the considered trade-off:
1: it is very far from being overcome
3: it is beginning to bepartially overcome
5: it is fully overcome.

The SMEs distribution alongthe various MC capability facets is depicted by using colours:

grey: 25% of SMEs have a valuet hat is equal to or below the value indicated by the grey line,
orange: 50% of SMEs have a value that is below or equal the value indicated by the grey line,
blue: 75% of SMEs have a valuet hat is below or equal to the value indicated by the grey line.

Sampled Italian SMEs

Sampled Austrian SMEs

The radar charts show that the trade-off(s) of variety-customization versus:

• speed is well or reasonably well overcome by both Italian and Austrian SMEs
• cost and volume tend to be scarcely or not-overcome by both Italian and Austrian SMEs
• quality is well overcome by Italian SMEs while there is a huge variation across Austrian SMEs
  
• customers’ guidance through the customization process presents huge differences across Italian SMEs and a noticeable variation across Austrian SMEs.
  

The MC 4.0 survey has also shown that MC levers’ use is not high in SMEs and it is quite different from lever to lever both in Austria and in Italy. More specifically:

• the fundamental MC lever of parts standardization is, on average, quite used both by Italian and Austrian SMEs
• product platform and product modularity (two other fundamental MC levers) are used to a significant extentby both Italian and Austrian SMEs but to less extent than parts standardization
• quick changeover and group technology are on average highly or significantly used by Italian SMEs but very scarcely used by Austrian SMEs
  
• delayed product differentiation and virtual build to order are on average significantly used by Austria SMEs but scarcely used by Italian SMEs
  
• software support for sales and for technical product configuration is used to a limited extent by both Italian and Austrian SMEs, but Italians use more software support for technical configuration while the Austrians use it more for sales configuration.
  

It also emerged that the use of MC levers is context-dependent:

• the MC levers are altogether less used by smaller SMEs
• the adoption of MC levers differs across business sectors.