ZEMCH 2015 - International Conference Proceedings | Page 546

1. Introduction
In the last decade, there was a significant theoretical and conceptual evolution of mass customization applied in design. Although there are reports of success in various sectors of the economy,
experiences in building construction are still rare and partial. (Fogliatto et al 2012; Rocha 2011).
Mass customization means a strategy for the production of goods and services in highly competitive contexts. Although paradoxical, the term introduced in 1987 by Davis can be understood
as the production of individually customized goods and services, at low cost in a short term and
in large volumes, involving flexible production and integration of the entire chain in a very agile
product development process (Noguchi 2003; Frutos et al 2004).
To Fredriksson and Gadde (2005) the term has been used for a variety of approaches and strategies for industrial production with several attention degrees to the client-user individual needs,
ranging from the on-demand production, fully customized, to slight preset variations on standards in the mass production. The authors find, however, a convergence to search for the best way
to meet the user needs without neglecting the mass production efficiency. From their observations, to different settings, different degrees of mass customization can be defined.
The study presented in this paper is being developed as part of the Brazilian research group lin