Sessions
Session 9
Design Thinking for MCP
Monday Oct 5 2009
15:45-17:05
Ritola, Tuomas (Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), Finland)
Alizon, Fabrice (Keyplatform, France)
Coatanéa, Eric (Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), Finland)
Implementing Mass Customization through Product and Service Platform Strategy
To address the globally present issue of increasingly fragmented market, this paper studies mass customization through a strategy of designing products and services based on platforms. Firstly, the fundamentals of product platforms are presented; secondly, the potential benefits and challenges related to platforms are studied; and finally, an overlook on research on mass customization via product platforms and variety in product supplies is provided.
Ritola, Alizon, Coatanea -paper pdf
McGrory, Peter (University of Art & Design Helsinki, Finland)
Systemic Thinking, Architectures & Integrated Platform Strategies: The Apple Case
The presentation will address the following: What is a Platform? Why to use Platforms? Why to extend the scope of Platform Thinking? How to ... Three lessons from Apple Inc., concerning the strategic and operative benefits of an Integrated Platform Approach to design and business planning.
Chan, Horace (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)
Lau, Alan (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)
Development and Implementation of Product Design Platform in Small and Medium Size Enterprises
Many businesses belonging to the local or the Mainland's product design and engineering sectors find it difficult to maintain commonality and economies of scale for products with strict customer design requirements, which greatly vary per contract or per piece. The design requirements are typically highly customized and costly to manufacture, involve small production runs, and require long delivery periods. This university–industry collaborative research project aims to develop a generic product design platform that will facilitate the design and manufacturing process of electronic and home appliances using product family design and our newly developed profile card concepts. The project is intended to benefit our local and the Mainland’s product design and manufacturing industry. This platform is a base for collecting, consolidating, and analyzing all necessary information—including design and engineering knowledge, components, requirements, technologies, and standards for a series of products—to build product architectures that can reduce the number of parts of products and the time to manufacture and assemble them, and that can streamline and simplify the conceptual design and embodiment design phases through the reuse of previous parts, components, and ideas.
Funke, Thomas (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria)
Keinz, Peter (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria)
When User Communities break ranks: an exploration of managerial approaches to dealing with undesired behavior
The explosive diffusion of the Internet since the mid-1990s has fostered the proliferation of user communities, virtual networks formed around a certain product or brand. One core aspect of user communities is that its members individualize or modify products, hack code, or adjust services to suit themselves. The modern business environment provides unprecedented opportunities for user communities to engage in these actions and, furthermore, the internet permits the rapid dissemination and communication of customer innovations (Benkler 2001, Figallo 1998, Preece 2000, Sproul 1995). In many cases the behavior of user communities formed around a certain product or brand can hardly be controlled by the respective manufacturer due to its rapid development (Lueg 2001). More often, user communities break ranks through certain behavioral patterns influencing the manufacturer in several ways. The case of the Apple Newton Brand Community (Muniz, Schau 2005) shows the miraculous performance and survival of a product that was abandoned by the marketer. It explicitly illustrates the importance of how a community can influence or even determine a company’s success, subsequently even leading to the return of the marketer. However, individualization and mass customization is, despite all positive effects, a source for conflict between customer and manufacturer. Our research examines these User-Manufacturer discrepancies and sheds light on the circumstances that may trigger and propel conflicts of this kind. By describing and comparing 7 well-known cases in detail, we try to reveal why such User-Manufacturer conflicts occur and how they develop depending on the manufacturer’s de-escalation strategy.