A study on customer involvement in final assembly for DIY products

The objective of this paper is to investigate the degree of the customer involvement in final assembly (CIFA) in establishing a do-it-yourself (DIY) product design in order to achieve cost minimization of the incumbent firm in a competitive environment. Such a decision-making problem is addressed with consideration of the competitors and the learning curve effect within the three hypothetical stages of a product life cycle (PLC). Accordingly, a Bayesian decision model that incorporates expert opinions with available information is proposed to determine the optimal CIFA ratio for a DIY product. Finally, a numerical example is used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, and sensitivity analyses are also performed in light of the numerical example.