Description
According to Pine (1993: p. 44), mass customization pursues the goal of “. . . developing, producing, marketing and delivering affordable goods and services with enough variety and customization so that nearly everyone finds exactly what [he or she] wants.” Although research on Mass Customization has grown steadily since the concept was introduced, it has progressed independently within operations management (e.g., Duray, 2000), marketing (e.g., Dellaert & Stremersch, 2005), innovation management (e.g., Franke and von Hippel, 2003), engineering management (e.g. Simpson, 2004), organization science (e.g. Pentland, 2003) and management information systems (e.g., Kraemer et al., 2000). To date, we have not seen a concerted effort to bring together different business perspectives to enhance our understanding of Mass Customization as a competitive strategy.

This special issue on Mass Customization is, therefore, devoted to papers that attempt to synthesize, integrate, and formalize findings from these diverse fields with the intent being the generation of new scientific insights for better understanding of Mass Customization as a competitive strategy. Suitable themes for this special issue include but are not limited to:
• How should the sales operations be designed in a mass customization context?
• How should innovation toolkits be integrated with “mass custom” operations?
• How does knowledge management support mass customization within the order acquisition and fulfilment process?
• How does the human resources function contribute to the implementation of a mass customization strategy?
• How does technology contribute to or hinder the pursuit of a mass customization strategy?
• How can the costs and benefits of mass customization be measured?

Susmission & Review details
Manuscripts should be sent in PDF format to mc-pom@gest.unipd.it (please put in the Subject line – “special issue on Mass Customization.”
All manuscripts will be reviewed according to the norms of the Production and Operations Management journal – see http://www.poms.org/Journal.html.
Submission deadline: September 30, 2007
All manuscripts will be reviewed by one or more of the guest editors for suitability before being sent to referees and/or guest associate editors.
Decisions regarding acceptance of articles will be made within two review cycles, where each review cycle will be within approximately 4 months.

http://www.poms.org/Call%20for%20Papers%20on%20Mass%20Customization%20for%20POM.pdf