Mass Customization and VR - AR

Manufacturing companies use various strategies when competing for a strong position in the market. Apart from improving the manufacturing processes themselves, more general strategies can be used.

One of these strategies is the willingness to meet customers' individual needs. This strategy is known as mass customization (MC).

Unlike mass production, which involves manufacturing repeatable (and often identical) products in large quantities, mass customization enables each customer's expectations of a given product, known as a configurable product or variant, to be met. It does this by adjusting the product to your individual needs.

Its application is very attractive from the point of view of the recipient. Still, it is complicated for a production company and has a specific risk of failure, especially as a result of increased design and manufacturing costs.

Mass customization is a problem from an employee training point of view, especially in manual assembly processes. In addition, because each product can be different, it's difficult to train employees and get them to acquire repeatable memory initially.

Virtual technologies (VR and AR) can help a great deal: VR can make employees better prepared for the task of being flexible before production starts.

AR can eliminate the need to prepare instructions at a given workplace. All information about new product variants can be quickly pushed to a given worker's personal device to enable them to react quickly to changes in the production plan.

VR helps make assembly operations faster; the more complex the process, the more help it offers. It is also very effective in reducing errors and shortening the time required to complete the assembly operation.

Both technologies are being used together to achieve a very promising synergistic effect.