The House Factory: A Simulation Game for Understanding Mass Customization in House Building

Abstract

Mass customization (MC) aims to provide customized products to fulfill clients’ requirements while maintaining efficiencies similar to mass production. Although the goals of mass customization, high product variety and production efficiency, are clear, its implementation might not be obvious. Indeed, a number of enablers (solution space, modular architecture, and delayed product differentiation) are required for these seemingly conflicting goals to be attained. This paper proposes a live simulation game called the House Factory to fulfill this gap. This game aims to enhance the intuitive understanding of mass customization and how this concept can be applied in house building. Distinct production modes are simulated to illustrate the trade-off between product variety and production efficiency, and this is addressed in mass customization. This paper presents an initial application of the game as a teaching tool in an undergraduate course and also discusses the potential learning yield from it.