Abstract:
This research was aimed at studying and implementing mass customization process in frozen food production. The main reason to apply mass customization to this industry is high variation in demand. It is not uncommon that the demand in some months is highly greater than the production while, in other months, there is stock-out. Since customer demand is fluctuated and companys forecast is inaccurate. Based on the research, the results showed that the costs of production could be reduced if the company implemented mass customization by keeping goods at packing preparation step. By this way, the company can reduce production cost compared to storing the work-in-process at other steps. The experiments were separated into two cases. First, customers demand is higher than companys forecast; as a result, the company could not satisfy customers demand and lost opportunity cost. Second, total order quantity of two package sizes is equal to the total companys forecast, but order quantity of each size is different. Thus, by storing the work-in-process at packing preparation step, the company can adjust packaging size to response to customers demand. By this mean, the company can avoid repacking and consequently the total production cost can be reduced. However, lead time of this mass customization process is longer than the normal process and might not applicable in urgent case