A RESEARCH ON MODULAR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT IN WEDDING GOWN PRODUCTION

Recent developments in production management gave way to the "mass customization" strategies, by which companies claim to solve the dilemma of meeting customer's unique needs still benefiting from scale economies. Delayed product differentiation (DPD) as a design strategy is implemented in agile manufacuring systems. Modularity is one of the key strategies in mass customization as it enables component commonality of products, thus differentiation of the products can be postponed to the assembly stage. In this research, production process of wedding gown is examined in this aspect and possibility of applying platform based modularity in wedding gown production is tested. The process flow and processing times of most basic wedding gowns were recorded to determine the stage in which the customization will take place. It had been tested whether there will be parts that can be standardized as modules or not. According to this preliminary examination, it will be possible to decide if the customization can be postponed to a later stage.