Two-stage product definition for mass customization

Customer needs (CNs) and its relationship with functional requirements (FRs) play important roles in customized product design. To better understand customer requirements and increase the efficiency of functional requirements recognition in mass customization, we introduce a two-stage method for product definition. In the first stage, both customer needs and customer characteristics (CCs) are analyzed. Similar customers are clustered into groups by the fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering analysis technique. In the successive stage, a neural network based model is constructed to simulate the relationship between custom needs and functional requirements. A case study and scenario of product definition for customizing personal computer is reported to illustrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed approach.