Additional Site Feature: MCPC 2007 video interviews with Joe Pine, Stan Davis, Mitchell Tseng and many other ...
The unpublic beta was one of the best kept secrets in the mass customization world of the last months --- now it is public: The huge database of configurators (co-design toolkits) compiled by Paul Blazek and Wolfgang Frühwirt and their team at Cyledge.com, a Vienna based consultancy in the field of configurators.
What is a configurator? Well, "simply put, a configurator is a software application for designing products exactly matching customers' individual needs", the site says. As they further explain, configurators can be found in various forms and different industries. They are employed in B2B as well as B2C markets and are operated either by trained staff or customers themselves. Whereas B2B configurators are primarily used to support sales and lift production efficiency, B2C configurators are often employed as design tools that allow customers to "co-design" their own products.
What Paul and Wolfgang do not is to document configurator software providers, but real configurators on the web ... more than 500 of them. All arranged in a nice database sorted by more than 85 criteria, including
- Steps to starting (distance to the configurator, number of web pages the user has to go through in order to get to the configurator (distance from the Homepage)Well, for the public version they just reveal about ten criteria, but this already provides plenty of benefit. You get a great overview of what is available in the world of mass customization: Did you know that there are six custom offerings for pets, 15 for children stuff, 37 configurators in the construction and building industries? Their rubric "most exotic configurators" list Sonor GmbH & Co. KG (custom drums), our friends from Elite Vintners (custom wine), Alois Reich (custom dirndl), Brewtopia (custom coasters), Tiny Pocket People (custom pocket dolls), or A.H.Beard Pty Ltd. (custom beds for children).- Process navigation
- Module library (pre-customized products are available for further customization)
- Automatic completion (The configuration process can be continued even if the user ignores a required decision during the configuration process. The system completes the product automatically, meaning that the user doesn’t need to edit every step in order to continue the process)- Loading Time (under 15 Seconds)
- 3D-perspective exists allowing the user to rotate the product picture 360°. (yes/no)
- Delivery time- Weaknesses of the site as seen by the evaluator.
And there is much more, over 50 pages of listings (
).
On top, the site has a nice blog (with some re-postings from my blog), a conference database, and a great library of short videos with key persons in the mass customization world. See my interview with a spectacular multimedia trick :-), or here wiser voices like Joe Pine, Mitchell Tseng, or Stan Davis himself ... the person who has coined the term mass customization:
Most of the videos were taken at the MCPC 2007 Conference. For many more videos go to the configurator-database.com site.
Full disclosure: I am a scientific advisor of this project and the sponsoring company, cyledge.com.
Comments