Integrated Product and Service Engineering Enabling Mass Customization

Manufacturing companies face many challenges today. One of these is how to successfully meet increasingly diverse customer needs. This paper elucidates, from several perspectives, how mass customization could be enabled using integrated product and service engineering. BT Products AB (BT) produces forklift trucks in Sweden that are customized and sold through various kinds of product offerings, which are also customer-tailored. By doing so, BT can offer their customers increased value through customized product service offerings. This paper shows, through a case study at BT, how the customization issues are tackled by the company. Though the development of products and services is conducted in separate organizations at BT, the company has managed to create successful customized offerings for its customers. However, with a more integrated development BT could become even more successful in its customer offerings.