Customised Rapid Manufactured Parts: Technology and Case Studies from the Custom-Fit Project

The design and manufacture of individually customised products is generally restricted to bespoke clothing or footwear for very wealthy customers. The aim of the Custom-Fit project was to develop a fast, flexible and economically viable route for the manufacture of individually customised parts. These products not only provide improved comfort levels but also provide better functional performance, including enhanced safety for the user. This 4.5 year, European Commission subsidised €16 million project, supported by the EU, involving 30 partners across the breadth of the Europe finished in early 2009. This paper will showcase the technology developed: CAD packages which automate the design process and three new rapid manufacturing methods. It will also include case studies on a range of customised products, including customised Motorcycles helmets. The case studies not only demonstrate the performance benefits of individual customisation but also show the potential for new approaches to product design. More information at www.Custom-Fit.org.Mechanical Engineerin

An Empirical Study of the Impact of IT Intensity and Organizational Absorptive Capacity on Customer Relationship Management Performance

In recent years, e-Business has emerged as a mainstream business practice. Engaged in highlycompetitive Internet -enabled markets, many business organizations have turned to customer relationship management (CRM), a computer -based information system that allows them to gain greater insight into their customers’ needs, to gain a competitive advantage. Consequently, CRM has risen to become a key ebusiness issue. Yet, many critical organizational factors underlie the success and performance of CRM. This study examines the impact of information technology (IT) intensity and organizational absorptive cap acity on CRM practices and performance, and presents a research model. Data collected through a survey of Taiwan financial service institutions suggest that CRM practices mediate the effects of IT intensity and organizational absorptive capacity on CRM performance

The Effect of Incorporating End-User Customization into Additive Manufacturing Designs

In the realm of additive manufacturing there is an increasing trend among makers to create designs that allow for end-users to alter them prior to printing an artifact. Online design repositories have tools that facilitate the creation of such artifacts. There are currently no rules for how to create a good customizable design or a way to measure the degree of customization within a design. This work defines three types of customizations found in additive manufacturing and presents three metrics to measure the degree of customization within designs based on the three types of customization. The goal of this work is to ultimately provide a consistent basis for which a customizable design can be evaluated in order to assist makers in the creation of new customizable designs that can better serve end-user. The types of customization were defined by doing a search of Thingiverse’s online data base of customizable designs and evaluating commonalities between designs. The three types of customization defined by this work are surface, structure, and personal customization. The associated metrics are used to quantify the adjustability of a set of online designs which are then plot against the daily use rate and each other on separate graphs. The use rate data used in this study is naturally biased towards hobbyists due to where the designs used to create the data resides. A preliminary analysis is done on the metrics to evaluate their correlation with design use rate as well as the dependency of the metrics in relation to each other. The trends between the metrics are examined for an idea of how best to provide customizable designs. This work provides a basis for measuring the degree of customization within additive manufacturing design and provides an initial framework for evaluating the usability of designs based on the measured degree of customization relative to the three types of defined customizations

Achieving First-Mover Advantage Through Product Customization on the Internet

The Internet provides an unprecedented capability for sellers to learn about their customers and offer custom products at special prices. Advanced manufacturing technologies have improved sellers’ manufacturing flexibility. To examine how these advances affect sellers’ products and pricing, we first develop a model of product customization and flexible pricing to incorporate the salient roles of the Internet and flexible manufacturing technologies in reducing the costs of designing and producing tailored consumer goods. Simultaneous adoption of customization in a duopolywill lead to reduced product differentiation but will not facilitate the price competition between their standard products. Consumer surplus improves after sellers adopt customization but does not always increase as technologies advance. When firms face a fixed entry cost and adopt customization sequentially, the first entrant always achieves a profit advantage and may even deter the entry of the second entrant by choosing his customization scope strategically

A Framework for Auditing Web-Based Information Systems

The last decade has seen an unprecedented rate of development of Web-Based Information System (WBIS). Enormous investment is currently being made in WBIS systems. There is a concern about whether the true capability of WBIS is being realized. As a consequence, growing attention is being paid to assessing the inherent contribution of WBIS. In this paper, we propose a WBIS audit methodology. The latter has two main features: 1) it structures the audit process as a hierarchical evaluation tree, using an Analytic Hierarchy Process model, 2) it allows the evaluation of a WBIS according to a specific set of criteria based on quality, security and readability requirements. Unlike past approaches, our methodology allows independent auditors, companies and users to minimize the time and effort needed to evaluate WBIS. It has been applied to a real-life example which is described in the paper, allowing us to validate our WBIS audit approach

Growing Local Food Systems: Information Technology Use and Impacts in Geographically-Embedded Markets

Over recent decades, reliance on global food systems involving highly distributed supply chains has increased. However, as awareness of environmental, social, and health consequences of these arrangements has developed, so has interest in local food systems (LFSs) in which consumers are served by nearby producers and intermediaries. Yet, in spite of the purported benefits of LFSs, there are challenges which limit their impact. There is an opportunity for IS scholars to contribute by examining how technology is and could be used in geographically-embedded markets like LFSs. We draw on prior studies of IT use and impacts in markets to generate exploratory propositions regarding ways that IT might be used to in LFSs. The results have the potential to build a bridge between IS research and the study and development of LFSs and, thus, create opportunities for IS scholars to contribute directly to the economic health and quality of life of communities

The Effects Of Recommendation Conflict On User’S Adoption Intention Toward Virtual Salespersons: A Principal-Agent Perspective

Virtual salesperson (VS) has been increasingly implemented on many Websites to provide online users with valuable shopping advice, because it has been proved to alleviate users’ cognitive overload and increase their decision quality. Thus, it has widely caught researchers’ attention to investigate what factors can increase user’s intention to adopt. However, there is little research examining the impact of another information resource on VS adoption intention when recommendation information conflict occurs. This study draws on principle-agent perspective to investigate whether online customer reviews have potential to arouse users’ concern about information asymmetry and the fear of VS opportunism. The research result should be of interest to academic researchers, developers of VSs, providers of VSs, and Webstores

Media bias and news customization

In this paper we analyze the effects of news customization (tailoring news to consumers’ political preferences) on media bias. In particular, we extend Hotelling’s duopoly location model to include news customization. Customization occurs when a media firm supplies the market with a continuous line segment of political opinions (i.e.: multi-ideology firm), instead of just a single point on the line (i.e.: single-ideology firm) as in the standard Hotelling model. The customization strategy has some costs related to the adaptation of news to consumers’ political preferences, however, the advantage arises from the possibility to price discriminate between different consumers. In this set up, we show that the possibility to customize news by media firms does not reduce media bias. Accordingly, in order to avoid fierce price competition in the standard segment (which also reduces the revenues from price discrimination in the customized segment), firms decide not to cover a larger variety of political options

Media bias, news customization and competition

The media bias literature has focused its attention on single-ideology media firms. We analyze the incentives for media firms to adopt a multi-ideology strategy. A multi-ideology strategy occurs when a media firm adapts news to consumers’ political preferences. In this sense, news customization can reduce media bias, since media firms can cover a larger variety of political opinions. We show that although the incentives to customize are larger under duopoly than under monopoly, a monopolist might also end up offering customized news to consumers. In this sense, we argue that the competition policy for the media sector should take into consideration not only media concentration issues, but also the plurality of political opinions embraced inside a media firm