大规模定制作为木材家具竞争策略外文翻译.docVIP

外文翻译 原文 Mass customisation of wood furniture as a competitive strategy Material Source: International Journal of Mass Customisation Author: Torsten Lihra ,Urs Buehlmann, Robert Beauregard Abstract: The existence of some segments of the US furniture industry is threatened by imports from offshore countries.Mass Customisation(MC)is discussed as a competitive strategy for US furniture manufacturers to offset their intrinsic production cost disadvantage. Examples from four domestic furniture industry subsectors are used to propose a possible correlation between the level of productcustomisation(MC)offered and their success in the market.The US kitchen cabinet industry was found to offer the highest level of MC of all subsectors analysed.Interestingly,at the present time,the kitchen cabinet industry is not heavily affected by offshoreimports.The wood household furniture industry,on the other hand,was ranked last in regard to MC and was also the one most heavily affected by offshore imported furniture.The study indicates that MC can be used as a successful business strategy for domestic producers competing with low-cost offshore manufacturers. Keywords: Mass Customisation;MC;furniture;business models; furniture manufacturer；survey market；globalisation；industrial engineering；United States；leanmanufacturing；US. Successful competition from low-labour-cost countries has led to serious downsizing in the US furniture industry(Buehlmann et al.,2004;Hilsenrath and Wonacott,2002) despite a favourable market environment for furniture over the past few years.While the North American furniture market is predicted to continue its growth at a moderate pace based on demographics and income predictions ofthe US population(Schuler and Buehlmann,2003),uncertainty about the success of the domestic industry exist. Low-cost offshore countries enjoy a significant price advantage in the US market,but price is not always the main sales argument to satisfy end-user n