A factory I visited two years ago was producing nearly 400 product variants.
The MD was exhausted.
Planning was stretched.
Supervisors were managing different configurations every shift.
Complaints were rising.
Lead times had stretched.
Margins had been shrinking for three years.
When I asked why, he said something simple.
“Every time a good customer asked for something slightly different, we said yes.”
Each yes made sense.
But over time, the factory became a complexity machine.
And in manufacturing, complexity is a cost that rarely shows up clearly on a P&L.
Hi, I’m Shrikant Prabhudesai.
I work with manufacturing CEOs to improve delivery, cost, and time performance so growth doesn’t quietly erode margins.
Today I want to talk about mass customisation—
not as theory, but as something companies often get wrong… and sometimes get very right.
The difference usually comes down to how operations are designed.
First mistake. Customising the process instead of the product.
When customers ask for variation, most factories adjust the process.
Different materials.
Different sequences.
Different finishing specs.
It feels like good service.
But over time, the shop floor becomes multiple one-off processes running in parallel.
Nothing runs long enough to become efficient.
I worked with a ₹55 crore hydraulic components manufacturer facing this.
On paper, utilisation looked fine.
But nearly 30 percent of floor time was lost in changeovers, rework, and waiting for variant-specific materials.
The issue wasn’t people or machines.
It was where variation was being handled.
The shift was simple but powerful.
They standardised core components—
same base body, same geometry, same connection standards.
Customisation moved to the final stage through modular additions.
Changeovers dropped.
Inventory simplified.
Batch sizes increased.
Costs came down.
When you customise at the end of a standard process,
you get production efficiency with custom pricing.
When you customise throughout,
you get job-shop costs without job-shop margins.
Second mistake. Not knowing which variants make money.
Most CEOs know overall margins.
Few know margins by variant.
I worked with an ₹80-crore press-components company with 180 variants.
They believed standard high-volume products drove profitability.
But a cost-to-serve analysis showed something else.
Some high-volume products were underpriced.
Margins were thin.
Meanwhile, several low-volume custom variants had margins nearly double the company average.
But because they were operationally difficult,
sales avoided pushing them
and production deprioritised them.
So the most profitable work was being underserved.
Once the MD saw variant-level margins, decisions changed.
They invested in making high-margin custom variants easier to produce—
not avoiding them.
Complexity and margin are not opposites.
It depends on how well you understand your costs at the variant level.
Third principle. Customer sees difference. Factory produces sameness.
This is where mass customization works.
The customer sees a tailored product—
their specs, dimensions, and finish.
It feels bespoke.
It is priced that way.
But inside the factory,
the process is largely the same across orders.
I saw this in a ₹130 crore capital equipment manufacturer.
Every order looked unique on paper.
But on the floor,
the same frames, assemblies, and panels were being built repeatedly.
Variation was in configuration, not core engineering.
They had clearly defined what could vary and what could not.
The result:
shorter lead times,
predictable costs,
consistent quality.
They were charging for customization
while running a largely standardised operation.
That gap—between perceived uniqueness and operational sameness—
is where margins live.
Most factories try to solve customer variation
by bending operations.
That works temporarily.
But creates complexity at scale.
The ones that get it right do three things:
They define a clear standard platform.
They decide what can vary and what cannot.
They push variation to the latest possible stage.
This changes everything—
how sales sells,
how planning plans,
and how customers perceive you.
Customization becomes a margin driver
when it is designed into the business.
It becomes a complexity problem
when it is simply absorbed.
A simple question to reflect on:
Where does variation enter your process today?
And is that the right place?
Because changing that one point
can transform your margins more than most decisions.
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