IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/prbchp/978-3-319-77556-2_32.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Mass Customization in Food Industries: Case and Literature Study

In: Customization 4.0

Author

Listed:
  • Sofie Bech

    (Aalborg University)

  • Anne-Sophie Schou Joedal

    (Aalborg University)

  • Thomas Ditlev Brunoe

    (Aalborg University)

  • Kjeld Nielsen

    (Aalborg University)

Abstract

The food industry currently faces demands for more diverse products. This introduces a different competitive environment than the food industry has traditionally experienced. A possible solution to the change in customer demand is to apply the business strategy, mass customization, which enables customized products at prices near that of mass-produced products. Although mass customization has been utilized in several different industries, the food industry has not yet seen this business strategy widely adopted. This paper presents a literature review, which only reveals few works within mass customization in the food industry. The limited literature covers food manufacturing processes, product configuration, and supply chain. To examine the potentials and challenges of mass customization in the food industry, a case study of a food manufacturer is conducted. It becomes evident that the case company has challenges with mastering the capabilities required to achieve mass customization. The challenges identified in this study are (1) no product solution space development, (2) limited knowledge of raw material, (3) manual equipment adjustment, (4) dedicated software and hardware solutions, and (5) limited choice navigation. In light of the listed challenges and the limited literature in the field, it is clear that more research is imperative in order to enable mass customization in the food industry.

Suggested Citation

  • Sofie Bech & Anne-Sophie Schou Joedal & Thomas Ditlev Brunoe & Kjeld Nielsen, 2018. "Mass Customization in Food Industries: Case and Literature Study," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, in: Stephan Hankammer & Kjeld Nielsen & Frank T. Piller & Günther Schuh & Ning Wang (ed.), Customization 4.0, pages 519-529, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-319-77556-2_32
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-77556-2_32
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-319-77556-2_32. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.