Object-Oriented Model for Customer-Building Company Interaction in Mass Customization Environment

Abstract

The customization of products and services—characterized by a customer-integrated process for product design, manufacturing, marketing, and support services—now represents an important competitive strategy in business environments. This trend has given birth to a new concept in the operations management field, called mass customization, which refers to the ability to provide individually designed products and services to every customer through high process flexibility and integration. This business approach has been identified as a competitive strategy by an increasing number of companies, to which the building industry is no exception. Buyers are eager to purchase flats (apartments) with high levels of customization that contain a high number of items designed and built in accordance with their needs and desires. This paper addresses the design of an object-oriented model to allow an agile interaction between consumers and companies, toward the implementation of mass customization in the building sector. The object-oriented model provides a dynamic and flexible tool to support company-customer information exchange and to keep the dispersed information consistent.