Collaborative customized product development framework

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to introduce a methodological approach to develop customized products which offer true customer value and achieve superior competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach - An integrated framework is presented where both front- and back-end features of product development activities are illustrated. Detailed explanations of the framework participants are discussed with their specifications and view points that illustrate the value of the framework. This framework communicates between citarasa and do-it-yourself-design configurators at the upstream, and available to promise, agile supply and demand network, advanced planning and scheduling systems in the downstream, in order to visualize the complete production scenarios and to maintain the flow of custom tailored product development. Findings - It is hoped that the illustrated framework will bridge the gap between manufacturers, and customers in order to produce customer satisfied products that fulfill the business target in terms of earning more revenues. Research limitations/implications - This research work is based on a theoretical hypothesis. Although the proposed framework is implemented in a truck manufacturing company, it requires application in more industrial organizations in order to generalize its effectiveness, suitability, and consistency in the manufacturing arena. Originality/value - This paper outlines the configuration principle, along with different tools and methodologies, which support manufacturing firms in the customization of products in both upstream and downstream activities in a profitable way. These tools or methodologies can help product developers to improve their due-date promising, exploitation of bottlenecks, and the visualization of their capability to produce the customers' specific products.