The increase of individualized customer demands and tough competition in the manufacturing sector gave rise to more customer centric operations management such as products and services (mass) customisation. Mass customization which inherits the ‘economy of scale’ from mass production, aims to meet specific customer demands with near mass production efficiency. Such an overarching concept has multiple impacts on operations management. This requires highly qualified and multi-skilled engineers who are well prepared for managing mass customisation. Therefore, this concept should be properly addressed by engineering education curricula which needs to keep up with the emerging business trends. This paper introduces a novel course about mass customisation and variety in operations management which recalls several Experiential Learning (EL) practices consistently with the principle of an active learning. The paper aims to analyse to which extent EL can improve the efficiency of the teaching methods and the retention rate in the context of operations management. The proposed course is given to engineering students whose’ perceptions are collected using semi-structured questionnaires and analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The paper highlights the relevance i) of teaching mass customisation, and ii) of active learning in engineering education, through the specific application in the domain of mass customisation.