Knowledge Reuse in Mass Customization of Knowledge-Intensive Services

Mass customization is bound to become a strategic necessity for companies in most industries, as it enables a firm to operate at mass production levels and cater to the needs of individual customers. When the products being produced are intangible and knowledgeintensive, knowledge-based systems (KBSs) are critical enablers of mass customization. Recognizing that many firms offering such products already have in place various KBSs that support the “production” of standard products, this paper investigates the extent to which eight knowledge reuse approaches can be applied so as to “adapt” existing KBSs for (re)use in the context of mass customization. The paper shows that no single knowledgelevel or symbol-level reuse approach supports the knowledge processing needs called for in mass customization; however, it shows that two innovative approaches which combine features of both knowledge-level and symbol-level approaches hold a great deal of promise, mainly because they capture ontology-related knowledge that can be fruitfully used to promote reuse and sharing of knowledge.