Investigating mass customization and sustainability compatibilities

Khaled Medini (1, 2, 3, 4) , Julien Le Duigou (5) , Catherine da Cunha (6) , Alain Bernard (6)

1 PIESO-ENSMSE - Département Performance Industrielle et Environnementale des Systèmes et des Organisations
2 Mines Saint-Étienne MSE - École des Mines de Saint-Étienne
3 EVS - Environnement, Ville, Société
4 FAYOL-ENSMSE - Institut Henri Fayol
5 Roberval - Roberval
6 IRCCyN - Institut de Recherche en Communications et en Cybernétique de Nantes

This paper examines the relationships between sustainability and mass customization in the business field. First a literature review investigates their enablers. This section ends with empirical conclusions about the impact of mass customization on sustainability highlighting some complementarities between these two concepts. Then three case studies illustrate the relevance of the identified enablers to different business sectors. The case studies show that several sustainability and mass customization enablers are deployed within same industrial contexts, thus pointing out potential synergies between them. The lack of sustainability and mass customization frameworks at the operational level is a major barrier for further investigation of the above synergies.

Mots clés: mass customisation; sustainability; enablers; sustainable mass customisation

Domaines: Modélisation et simulation

Khaled Medini, Julien Le Duigou, Catherine da Cunha, Alain Bernard. Investigating mass customization and sustainability compatibilities. International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology, 2015, 7 (1), pp.11-20. ⟨10.4314/ijest.v7i1.2⟩. ⟨emse-01096970⟩