The leading trade fair for moldmaking and tooling, design and application development, EuroMold, which takes place from the 25th to the 28th of November 2014 in Frankfurt, will present the possibilities of Mass Customization as pioneering business model in an impressively lifelike manner. Customized mass production refers to a manufacturing method in which a product can be customized or configured by the customer using modular design principles, but at the price of a comparable standard product.
To build up Mass Customization as a division within the company or as an independent niche, all areas such as product design, procurement, customer contact, warehouse management, supply chain and quality assurance must be coordinated. If all quality requirements are implemented, it allows manufacturers to plan demand better, to achieve desired higher prices without additional costs and to optimise their cash flow, as production usually only starts as soon as payment is received.
According to the Industry 4.0 vision of the future, manufacturers are also increasing investment in cyber-physical systems (CPS). CPS are networks of smaller computers equipped with sensors and actuators that are installed as so-called "embedded systems" in materials, equipment and machinery parts, and which are interconnected via the Internet. Plants, machinery and individual work pieces continuously exchange information; all production and logistics processes are integrated.
