I never met Omayra Sánchez and in all certainty will never meet her because she is no longer a part of this world. Her story is one of the saddest that I have ever heard. I think the picture tells it all, but do visit this wiki page to read the full story.
Just recently, I was browsing through the library of my institute when I came across an international journal on mass customization. The reason this particular journal caught my attention was not because I am interested in all this stuff. The reason I got interested was the inherent paradox present in the title.
Customization by definition is modifying something for a specific purpose. So we have extra expensive customized cars, bike and what not. Now if this customization is available to everyone, which is what I presume is indicated by mass, what’s so unique about it? One might argue that uniqueness and customization are different but then all the ruckus for customization is because of the uniqueness that it brings. If this uniqueness is itself destroyed by “mass customization”, I wonder what the use of customization is! I guess I will never be able to understand the full import of these confusing terms and probably that’s the reason why I find managers rather incomprehensible at times.
