Companies are being forced to react to the growing individualization of demand. At the same time, cost management remains of paramount importance due to the competitive pressure in global markets. Thus, making enterprises more customer centric efficiently is a top management priority in most industries. Mass customization and personalization are key strategies to meet this challenge. Companies like Procter&Gamble, Lego, Nike, Adidas, Land's End, BMW, or Levi Strauss, among others, have started large-scale mass customization programs. This book provides insight into the different aspects of building a customer centric enterprise. Following an interdisciplinary approach, leading scientists and practitioners share their findings, concepts, and strategies from the perspective of design, production engineering, logistics, technology and innovation management, customer behavior, as well as marketing.

China is inevitably becoming a giant in the world economy. All international companies in the United States have a presence in China, and many international Chinese companies have a presence in the United States. These companies face complex challenges in their global value chain: strategy, sales and marketing, supply chain management, information technology, and production. This book examines case studies from companies who have successfully navigated this new market environment. The book starts with strategy as a fundamental stage in the value chain. It then proceeds to explore globalization of sales and marketing, logistics and supply chain challenges of supporting global operations, necessary changes to the IT system capabilities as firms begin to address new markets, and finally, efficient and competitive production processes. The book will be valuable to managers who are looking for tools that have been used successfully by industry leaders, as well as to instructors who would like to use real-world practice to educate future managers and decision makers.

This book provides practical guidance and awareness for a growing body of knowledge developing across a variety of disciplines. This initiative is a celebration of the Gavriel Salvendy International Symposium (GSIS) and provides a survey of topics and emerging areas of interest in human-automation interaction. This set of articles for the GSIS emphasizes a main thematic areas: mobile computing. Main areas of coverage include Section A: Health, Care and Assistive Technologies; Section B: Usability, User Experience and Design; Section C: Virtual Learning, Training and Collaboration; Section D: Ergonomics in Work, Automation and Production. In total, there are more than 600 pages emphasizing contributions from especially early career researchers that were featured as part of this (virtual) symposium and celebration. Gavriel Salvendy initiated the conferences that run annually as Human-Computer Interaction within LNCS of Springer and Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics International (AHFE). The book is inclusive of human-computer interaction and human factors and ergonomics principles, yet is intended to serve a much wider audience that has interest in automation and human modeling. The emerging need for human-automation interaction expertise has developed from an ever-growing availability and presence of automation in our everyday lives. This initiative is intended to provide practical guidance and awareness for a growing body of knowledge developing across a variety of disciplines and many countries.