Analyzing Strategy and Processes for Product Customization in Large-Scale Industrial Settings

In practice companies face situations where many customization requests could not be foreseen. Thus, companies need to be able to rapidly develop customizations even after release. The objective of this study is to understand how industry handles the customization challenge with a focus on the strategy and processes used. Two cases have been studied (one telecom company located in Germany and one located in Sweden). For data collection purposes interviews(a total of 25) and process documentations were used. The result showed that the two companies have different product development strategies (compositional vs integration) and also follow different development processes for customizations, these being further elaborated in this paper.