abstract
- © 2020 Elsevier B.V.. All rights reserved.Customer-centric strategies such as mass-customisation rely heavily on customer involvement such as co-designing products and services. In this sense, companies struggle to provide a better shopping experience by enabling technologies and Industry 4.0 practices. Online configurators are an example of these technologies that exist since decades but whose role in increasing value for the customer and the company is growing. This paper addresses the integration of sustainability preferences into configurators, with a focus on the 3D-printing domain. The basic ideas of this research work are, on one hand, that configurators can be enriched with readable and meaningful environmental indicators to increase customers environmental awareness based on the measurement of the impact of their choices, and on the other hand, such historical data about customer choices and orders available within configurators databases could support a more sustainable management of products and services portfolios. A case study-based research was developed in the 3D-printing domain exhibiting a high potential to support the rapid prototyping of customised products and thus helping to speed-up production ramp-up and time-to-market. The main findings include an initial proof-of-concept and several opportunities to further develop the configurator.