Making mass production fit into a custom-built job.

• Position: Textiles and apparels - Interview

Kevin O'Mara is a professor at Elon College's Love School of Business and chair of the MBA program. He specializes in strategic management and technology and has an MBA from the University of Houston and a doctorate in technology management from N.C. State. Lately he's been gauging the impact of mass customization.

BNC: What is mass customization?

It's offering a product customized for each customer without the corresponding increase in cost. It's an oxymoron. We've always had customization, but now, given technology, we can get it at the same cost as mass production.

BNC: Companies are already doing this?

Yeah. Levi's has the "personal pair of jeans" approach. Pretty much all the computer companies do it. You see it in the commercials from Gateway, talking about a specific computer for some lady in Jersey.

BNC: You see opportunity in textiles and apparel?

A study about five years ago found there was $25 billion in waste in that industry. There's massive amounts of inventory just sitting in shops and malls. Every piece of that is cost. Buyers project out 60 weeks what the fashion will be like. If I buy too much, I've got markdowns galore. If I don't buy enough, I'm missing out on sales. Build-to-order means you have much less inventory and markdown.

BNC: Will people place a custom order without seeing the product first?

It hasn't been done to any great extent in the past. We will have to interact. Anderson Windows has had remarkable success using a computer to design windows to a customers' specifications. Anderson invents the system, then trains Home Depot reps. Levi's has its own stores. In New York, they measure you and find out what you want through silhouettes, pants with different lengths and sizes, and a computer program that allows you to pick things.

BNC: How did the textile executives you interviewed react to the concept?

A lot of them are skeptical. It is a significant shift in thinking. If you're in the marketing end, this is certainly another opportunity to please the customer. But manufacturing looked at this as another thing you're asking them to do. In the last decade, the textile industry has had to improve quality and processing enormously. Then it had to speed up delivery. Now you're slapping on an entirely different manufacturing process.

BNC: Milliken is already doing this in South Carolina?

They do it for carpet for hotels, convention centers, things like that. They use a white rug and a machine called a Millitron...