Mass Customization: A Revolution in the Making

by Ping Fu

A medical device company produces 100,000 individualized orthodontic devices each month. A motorcycle manufacturer has the potential to create dozens of unique design variations for its renowned gas tank. A hearing aid company is overcoming the industry's biggest problem - customer discomfort - by customizing its devices to fit the ears of each customer.

Just a few years ago, these types of scenarios would have seem far-fetched, but they are happening today, and over the next decade will likely be considered "business as usual." We are on the cusp of a second revolution in manufacturing, one where mass-produced products will be made for individual fit and taste. It's called mass customization, and the enabling force is a process called digital shape sampling and processing (DSSP).

Geomagic provides software and services for DSSP, which entails automating capture, processing and production of digital models from physical objects. Our goal is to remove the barriers between the physical and digital worlds. The ease-of-use, accuracy and flexibility of DSSP enables mass customization, better web-based marketing, and greater design and manufacturing efficiency.

Hand-Made Gathers Mass

Mass customization is the next step in a process that began with hand-made, individually produced goods. At the dawn of the 20th century, the Industrial Revolution replaced small-scale production with mass-produced goods from assembly lines. The emphasis was on productivity - faster and cheaper manufacturing of products. While there is often the illusion of great choice in mass production - many different lines of stereo products or TVs, for example - there is a dearth of products that are unique or custom-crafted for individual tastes, sizes and configurations. The need to push more products through assembly lines often stifles creativity, as design becomes a stepchild to the manufacturing process.

Mass customization uses new technology to combine the time-honored notion of individually produced products with the efficiency of mass production. For it to work, DSSP has to fulfill its promise of providing fast, low-cost and accurate models that are highly flexible and fit into existing digital infrastructures and conventions.

Inside DSSP

One of the big questions about DSSP is whether it is just a catch-phrase or if it can really do what innovators say it can. To answer this question, it's important to make the distinction between DSSP and existing CAD technologies.

Only one percent of goods manufactured today use CAD data. There are two reasons for this: CAD modeling takes too long and is too complex. Most of the time, the tools are overkill for the job at hand. You don't use PageMaker or Quark Express to write a simple inter-office memo. You use e-mail or a simple text editor. You don't use something designed to produce a book to write a quick message.

What developers and manufacturers need is a simple and fast way of accurately imaging new product designs. This means software that allows users to scan a 3D object and generate an accurate model almost as easily as snapping a picture with a digital camera and producing a 2D photograph. The 2D photography model is what we used to guide software development at Geomagic. Our analysis revealed the following key elements central to traditional photography:

• Automation
• Repeatability
• Ease of use
• Precision
• High resolution
• Fit with current standards

Anything that people ask us to do we measure by these characteristics. Our focus is on a set of attributes that make sense within the domain of photography.

Uncovering Impact Markets

The temptation is to envision DSSP as a do-everything-for-everybody solution. At Geomagic, we've had to resist that temptation. When we first went to the market with our software there were a lot of people willing to buy. It was different, and did some things that no other product on the market could do. But, you can't market a product indefinitely based on cool technology. We asked ourselves, "where are those people who are going to use this as an intimate part of the production line, where it has an impact on their business in terms of new product and service development?"

The key applications that have evolved are industrial, medical devices, e-commerce, consumer and archiving. One of the early adopters is the field of audiology. There are 4,000 audiologists nationwide, with four-million hearing aids sold in the last year alone, at prices of $1,000 to $4,000 per unit. The accumulated market for the next five years is about $178 million.

One of the biggest challenges to this market is discomfort, and the stigma of wearing a traditional hearing aid. For the manufacturer, proper fit hits directly at the bottom line: If the device does not fit it gets returned - which happens for 25 percent of units sold. The internal computer and chips in these devices are very sophisticated, but it is the shell - created using old-fashioned casting - that is the bottleneck in the process. It's a bit like not being able to build PCs fast enough because the cases are too difficult to create.

The challenge of designing and manufacturing individually tailored hearing-aid shells is a perfect test case for DSSP's mass customization capabilities. To answer the challenge, we developed simple, push-button software to build each customized shell based on a 3D scan of the ear impression. Stereolithography systems print the shell directly from the 3D model. This completely eliminates the need for casting. It also replaces human time with machine time. With this process, we were able to reduce 40 minutes of manual time to five minutes of computer time.

Another early DSSP adopter is Align Technology, maker of adult orthodontic devices. Align's Invisalign System is a series of treatments based on plastic devices that are clear, removable and disposable. Each device (anywhere from 12 to 50 are used in a typical treatment) is individually manufactured at an accuracy within thousandths of an inch. The attending orthodontist produces a mold of the patient's teeth, which is scanned by Align to produce a 3D digital model. Align technicians digitally mark and interpolate the treatment steps needed to straighten the teeth. The plastic devices, called aligners, are worn for two weeks at a time, slowly shifting teeth into their final treatment positions.

At the end of last year, Align reported that 9,200 patients, including 1,700 in November, had begun treatment using the Invisalign System. This is smaller than a drop in the bucket compared to the market potential: Align estimates there are 130-million adults in the U.S. who are suitable for treatment with the Invisalign System. The challenge is continuing to provide the technology that will allow the company to rapidly scale its manufacturing capacity. The vehicles for doing this are faster 3D geometry processing, greater accuracy, removing redundant steps, and eliminating time-consuming manual work.

Geomagic helps Align design 3D software that allows orthodontists to prescribe treatment using an animation of the patient's teeth, from beginning to the final result. These digital models then drive the fabrication of aligners for the patient's entire treatment.

Align has come up with several innovations for mass customization, including the ability to produce aligners using dozens of stereolithography machines generating 30 different molds at one time, animation algorithms to simulate tooth movement, and faster, more accurate scanning. Remaining manual processes - such as trimming of plastic molds and individual tasks during virtual treatment - are Align's short-term targets for automation. Last year, the company cut two-thirds off the time it takes to produce a treatment plan and a full set of aligners. This year, Align plans to cut its existing time by more than half.

Delivering Differentiation

In the medical device field, mass customization usually involves products that are completely unique for each individual. But there are also applications where mass customization is not as individualized, but still provides strong product differentiation. An example is Geomagic's work with Harley-Davidson.

Harley's unique customer base requires new engineering for the mechanics of the bike, but a retro look for the styling. The styling of the gas tank, mounted in front of the seat, is an important feature of the overall appearance of the motorcycle. Although Harley has embraced 3D CAD/CAM, the teardrop shape of the gas tank made it impossible to create a digital model accurate enough to comply with the company's strict manufacturing tolerances.

Harley sent ADC, a service bureau that uses Geomagic Studio software, the gas tank. The tank was scanned, turned into a surface model in Geomagic Studio, and imported into Pro/ENGINEER within a day. Harley put it into its 2005 bike design with only one small design change.

Now that the gas tank has been captured as a digital model, it opens all kinds of marketing opportunities. Conceivably, people could go to Harley-Davidson's web site, view a wide range of gas tank styles, and choose the one they want. In one day, Harley-Davidson could tell the customer if the order can be processed and how much it would cost. The company could then create a bill of materials for that unique bike. This kind of customization would allow the customer to participate in making the design decisions for some parts of the final product.

Reinventing E-Commerce

In addition to benefits in mass customization and cycle-time reduction, DSSP offers significant opportunities for differentiating products over the Internet. This fits into the often-hyped, but seldom fully realized, arena called e-commerce.

While the Internet was originally hyped as a tool for providing differentiation, in many cases it has worked the opposite way. In its present incarnation, the web is perhaps the greatest tool for turning products and services into commodities, simply because it is so easy for customers to make buying decisions solely on price, features and availability. DSSP holds the potential to make the Internet a vehicle for differentiation.

Companies can display their products as interactive, realistic models rather than flat photographs. Cost and speed have been the major bottlenecks in creating useful online models. Let's say you are publishing an e-catalog that changes every month. If it needs to be maintained manually, and there are 10,000 parts involved, then it's almost impossible to do in 3D using traditional modeling tools.

Those types of obstacles are why we see e-catalogs with 2D pictures that don't provide much more value than their printed counterparts. Contrast that to a 3D catalog where users could assemble, remodel and easily replace elements.

The challenge is increasing the speed and reducing the cost of creating digital models. Leaving aside the 20 percent representing the most-difficult and the simplest models, technologies such as CAD, computer graphics and Flash animation reach a plateau at which there are no improvements in the ratio of speed to cost. On the other hand, DSSP has the potential to provide much greater efficiencies of scale, delivering greater speed at lower costs.

There are 3D machines right now that can produce a photo in a fraction of a second, just like a 2D camera. In the dental field, the cost of the models produced by Align Technology is now two or three dollars per image. Align will produce millions of models this year that will be used for both treatment visualization and device manufacturing.

Recently, John Deere came to Geomagic with a request for 100,000 unique part models in three years. This would allow the company - and others like it in the automotive and aerospace industries - to have a digital inventory that allows parts to be created on demand. The savings from eliminating physical inventories could be in the billions annually for a company such as Boeing. Nothing at that level has been done yet, but given the growth in 3D technology, it is no greater challenge than Align faced four years ago.

Progress Beyond Imagination

What makes Geomagic so positive about the future of mass customization is how quickly we have seen it progress. In 1997 I said to investors, "imagine walking into the orthodontist's office and watching an animation of your daughter's teeth over the next two years." Even with that prediction, however, I had no idea that a company such as Align would even exist today as a public entity, much less accomplish all it has to date. This is the early indication that the technology is here and it's ready. It's just a question of which companies are going to pick up on it and make things happen.

Far from the nebulous products and services trumped up during the dot.com boom days, mass customization gives companies the ability to create new products that improve our lives. It fulfills the basic purpose of technology: to enable business to build more of what people want and less of what they don't want via differentiation, communication and customization.

Customization is going to be the key to this century. The companies that can customize will grow. This is not to say that the traditional production won't still be there - it will. But the real question is can you customize at a cost that people can afford? Can you shorten that value chain? Already we are seeing companies answering that question with a resounding "yes."

Ping Fu is president and CEO of Geomagic Inc., a company that provides DSSP software and services that enable mass customization. While at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Fu started the Mosaic project that led to the first Internet browser.