| An increasing trend towards a new manufacturing model with the objective of 'low cost, customisation, and zero customer lead time'is occurring due to customers demanding their orders for individual products or services be fulfilled instantly and at price near the price of standard products or services, and due to manufacturers longing for satisfying individual customer's needs with instant fulfillment as customers articulate their needs while manufacturers stay near mass production efficiency. It is therefore imperative to develop a new manufacturing model via innovation to realise the synergies among customisation, zero customer lead time, and low cost. A new graphical language tool to describe manufacturing models, named manufacturing model tree (MMT), was proposed. The practices-based approach and rules-based approach, two existing description tools of manufacturing models in literature, can not depict the relationships among the elements of a manufacturing model, and can not describe a manufacturing model totally and effectively, because of only using literal language. It is found by analysing their applicability that the existing graphical language tools cannot describe manufacturing models or have marked disadvantages to describe manufacturing models. The criteria of MMT, stages to draw MMT, and benefits of using MMT were also put forward. MMT is composed of three basic elements and two kinds of basic relationships. MMT can depict the relationships among the elements of a manufacturing model. With MMT, the manufacturing model can be described and understood more effectively and holistically than the practices-based approach and rules-based approach. The Manufacturing Model Innovation Model (MMIM), which is composed of Innovation Sources for manufacturing models and Manufacturing Model Innovation Process Model (MMIPM), was proposed. Despite many innovation approaches that have been used to develop many manufacturing models since 1980, the existing innovation approaches are all fit for specialised case and there is no universal innovation process model for identifying new manufacturing models. The Innovation Sources proposed can direct innovators to seek new operational tactices when developing a new manufacturing model. MMIPM consists of 10 stages to develop the new manufacturing model. MMIPM embodies the methods used in developing world-class manufacturing,lean production, mass customisation, and strategically flexible production. MMT, Innovation Sources, and MMIPM are integrated into MMIM because MMT and Innovation Sources are used in the stages of MMIPM. MMIM is a universal model to develop a new manufacturing model. MMIM can be illustrated by examining the history of Toyota Motor Corporation between 1948 and 1963 when lean production was pioneered. An operational framework of a new manufacturing model of 'instant customerisation'was elicited by means of MMIM. The current efforts towards instant customerisation and customerisation have mainly highlighted their strategies while neglecting the operational tactics and tenets. The operational framework proposed includes the operational tactics of low cost and the tactics of synergies of low cost, customisation, and zero customer lead time. The tactics of low cost mainly include building similar component parts to (traditional) forecasting, product family based design, modular product design, and modular process design. All the tactics of low cost are succeeded from mass customisation. The tactics of synergies of low cost, customisation, and zero customer lead time mainly have finalise-to-individual demand forecasting, total customer participation and value fusion, increasing overall production system efficiency, establishing an integrated planning and control system, establishing an integrated information management system, and establishing an integrated design platform. All of these tactics form five operational tenets of instant customerisation basing on the relationships among these tactics. The operational framework proposed can integrate these operational tactics into a coherent production and operation system because the framework can characterise the relationships among these tactics. After analysed the characteristics of individual demands, the thoughts of individual demand forecasting was brought forward. It is considered that individual demand forecasting aims at forecasting needs of a single customer by making use of the transaction and non-transaction information which are related to the customer. In addition, the essential ingredients to implement individual demand forecasting were put forward so that forecast accuracy can be increased. In order to decrease complexity of individual demand forecasting, a forecasting platform was advanced. Three new tactics in sharing demand information are proposed because individual demand forecasting cannot be realized using the existing tactics. The flow to implement individual demand forecasting was presented. After describing the process of occurring and transferring of demand in demand chains and pointing out the disadvantages of placing order to manufacturers by demand chains, demand visibility method (DVM), a method for manufacturers to determinedemand using demand-related information from demand chains before placing orders to manufacturers by demand chains, was put forward. The elements of DVM were proposed, which includes demand visibility information sources, demand visibility techniques, cooperation mechanism between manufacturers and nodes of demand chains, optimisation of demand visibility point, and assistant techniques for demand visibility. The characteristics of DVM, which the elements of DVM will be changed with the different demand, are illustrated and verified. The illustrated and verified characteristics of DVM can reveal that individual demand forecasting is a kind of DVM and that instant customerisation, a new manufacturing model proposed in this work, is fit for needs characterised by low correlation and middle autocorrelation.
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