Study on Supply Chain Management for Product Family in Mass Customization

The mass customization is one of the main paradigms in manufacturing in the 21st century. It is oriented to product family. Making the best of the similarities of the products and the processes in product family, the modularization and standardization of product family were realized. Thus the negative influences on supply chain management made by the varieties of products were eliminated. Firstly, the standardization of product family was analyzed in terms of component standardization, process standardization, product standardization and procurement standardization. The modularization of product family mainly included product´s modularization and process´s modularization. Secondly, the effects of them on supply chain management were discussed respectively. Then, based on the above-mentioned analysis, the characteristics of the supply chain management for the product family were presented. Finally, according to the characteristics, the model of supply chain for product family was built.