Customization Tech Gains Speed, but Adoption Stumbles Over Organizational Hurdles
New research on product configurators—software that lets firms customize products without raising production costs—reveals that technical capability isn't the bottleneck. Instead, companies struggle with organizational and business challenges when rolling out these tools. Understanding these barriers could help manufacturers compete more effectively in markets demanding personalization.
Originaltitel: Configure to Conquer: Implementing Configurators to Improve Competitiveness
<p>Recent advancements in technology have created new possibilities for customizing product design without significantly changing the costs of production. By using so-called configurators, which are a form of platform-based technology, firms now have the means to customize products more efficiently. Previous research has mainly focused on the technical side of configurators, whereas the business and organizational issues involved during their introduction are much less understood. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the challenges of adopting configurators in an organization. We combine a literature review from 1980 to the present with findings from an empirical study of a newly developed sales configurator for maritime components.</p>