Reducing Impact of Negative Complexity on Sustainability of Mass Customization

Vladimir Modrak, Zuzana Soltysova, Jan Modrak and Annamaria Behunova
Additional contact information
Vladimir Modrak: Faculty of Manufacturing Technologies, Technical University of Kosice, Kosice 042 00, Slovakia
Zuzana Soltysova: Faculty of Manufacturing Technologies, Technical University of Kosice, Kosice 042 00, Slovakia
Jan Modrak: Faculty of Manufacturing Technologies, Technical University of Kosice, Kosice 042 00, Slovakia
Annamaria Behunova: Faculty of Manufacturing Technologies, Technical University of Kosice, Kosice 042 00, Slovakia

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 11, 1-16

Abstract: In the mass customization environment, product platform development includes several aspects. One relates to the extent to which products are customized. Usually, a high level of product variety brings significant benefits to customers. On the other hand, a high degree of product customization may have a negative environmental impact during production, due to higher material usage. One possible way to reduce the impact is eliminating infeasible configuration options, caused by incompatibilities between optional component types, within a product platform. Such optional components are a source of negative complexity. However, a reduction of optional component types within a product platform can lead to decreasing the extent of the variety of a product to an undesirable level. An effective way of finding this optimal level of reduction is to quantify and analyze the rates between positive and negative complexities, which are related to the numbers of configuration options. The method for this purpose is presented in this paper.

Keywords: positive complexity; negative complexity; infeasible configurations; product platform; customer’s perception; decision making algorithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/11/2014/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/11/2014/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:11:p:2014-:d:117494

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().