Abstract
Mass Customisation (MC) is increasingly being touted in the global clothing industry
as a key strategy to survive an ever-more turbulent market. A European Union report
(Probst, Monfardini, Frideres, Demetri, Kauffmann & Clarke, 2013) estimates that five
per cent of the global fashion industry will be mass customised by 2018. This growing
importance necessitates its consideration in the South African context, especially as
a possible opportunity for the ailing clothing manufacturing sector. Since there is a
dearth of literature on MC in the South African context, an exploration into the
suitability of MC as a manufacturing strategy for South African clothing
manufacturers was a first step in understanding this opportunity. The competencies
needed to successfully undertake MC manufacturing were drawn from the literature
and were used to frame the research. Three corporate clothing manufacturers were
selected as a case for this study due to the existing levels of customisation that exist
in this sector. In-depth interviews were conducted in order to determine whether
these firms currently exhibited the existence of the identified competencies essential
to undertake MC within their organisations. One of the interviewed manufacturers
seemed to have all the competencies needed to manufacture for mass
customisation, whilst another very-almost did. All three manufacturers were severely
affected by the dearth of suppliers and this led to the competencies identified from
the literature being revised for the South African context.
M.Com. (Business Management)