A Mass Customization Approach to Business Process Modularization

The capacity of organizations to deal with changing market and societal conditions becomes an important success factor. This property reflects on the way the modus operandi of an organization is organized. Based on a real-world case study, we outline a method that integrates mass customization as an organization concept from industry with an analysis of the foundational elements that constitute business processes. The purpose of this exercise is to explore if such method contributes to business process flexibility through a rigorous modularization of these processes. Its ‘parts and patterns’ approach results from a deliberate engineering attitude, whereby business operations, business information systems and information technology are operationalized based on a single architecture. The paper proposes a business process elements catalog as a facility to search and employ process constructs, thereby supporting their reuse. In doing so, the goal of this paper is to make the first step of a larger, three-step design science research effort into the support of business process modularization through mass customization.