Customization of capital goods - Implications for after sales

Customization is nowadays often regarded as a dominant paradigm in many industries. However, the impacts of customization on different business perspectives are still inadequately reported Especially in the case of long product life cycles, after sales is a very significant business domain. In addition, it is even claimed to be a very profitable one. A distinctive feature of after sales business is the high number of low volume product items. The question is, does customization actually produce more those kinds of items,. and thus increase the costs and complexity of operations. A case study is conducted to investigate the implications of customization for the spare part business. In this study, the complete life of one product cycle up to the present is analysed The main focus is on the change in the number of spare part items and the change in inventory value due to customization. A set of explanations is provided to describe the relationship between after sales and customization. Furthermore, a classification of customizations from the after sales point of view is presented in this paper. As a conclusion, the study suggests that the impacts of customization on the number of items and inventory value are minor.