China is inevitably becoming a giant in the world economy. All international companies in the United States have a presence in China, and many international Chinese companies have a presence in the United States. These companies face complex challenges in their global value chain: strategy,...

Companies are being forced to react to the growing individualization of demand. At the same time, cost management remains of paramount importance due to the competitive pressure in global markets. Thus, making enterprises more customer centric efficiently is a top management priority in most...

Mass customization aims at satisfying individual customer needs while keeping mass production efficiency. This paper discusses the employment of concurrent engineering for realizing mass customization. Concurrent design for mass customization (CDFMC) is put forward by extending the traditional...

The growing importance of the service sector in almost every economy in the world has created a significant amount of interest in service operations. In practice, many service sectors have sought and made use of various enhancement programs to improve their operations and performance in an...

Proposes a pragmatic approach to product costing. The approach involves two stages, namely the preparatory stage and the production stage. In the preparatory stage, standard routings are first extracted from existing products. A generic activity hierarchy is established according to the analysis...

Customization promises higher value creation by matching customers' individual specific needs with manufacturers' capabilities. However, difficulties in terms of information asymmetry, information stickiness, and conflicting incentives prevent customers from effectively tapping into the value of...