How to Measure and Identify the Ultimate Improvement Required for Customer Satisfaction

In current hypercompetitive markets, customer satisfaction is one of major requirements that enable the company to generate some benefits to their business. This is also including the relationship with the customers as a good foundation for the creation of loyalty and repeat purchase of customers. However, the customer requirements are much more technically complex than in consumer market, especially in service sector. On the other hand, the analysis of importance and performance assumed on Kano method to measure customer satisfaction also lead to misleading the implications of customer satisfaction since some scholars use this technique into symmetric and linear relationships between attribute level performances. In this study, we poposes the approach on how to find the priority improvement or the most significant element required for improvement based on Kano method as a measurement basis ; using Kano manipulating graph, ranking level, and then a simplification approach toward the graphs to enable the priorities / significant element required for improvement determined and justified. To justify the approach proposed, some trials carried out in service companies as the case of study

HOW TO MEASURE AND IDENTIFY THE ULTIMATE IMPROVEMENT REQUIRED FOR CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

In current hypercompetitive markets, customer satisfaction is one of major requirements that enable the company to generate some benefits to their business. This is also including the relationship with the customers as a good foundation for the creation of loyalty and repeat purchase of customers. However, the customer requirements are much more technically complex than in consumer market, especially in service sector. On the other hand, the analysis of importance and performance assumed on Kano method to measure customer satisfaction also lead to misleading the implications of customer satisfaction since some scholars use this technique into symmetric and linear relationships between attribute level performances. In this study, we poposes the approach on how to find the priority improvement or the most significant element required for improvement based on Kano method as a measurement basis ; using Kano manipulating graph, ranking level, and then a simplification approach toward the graphs to enable the priorities / significant element required for improvement determined and justified. To justify the approach proposed, some trials carried out in service companies as the case of study

Exploring Attractive Quality Requirements for Short Food Supply Chain Digital Platforms

© 2022. This article published as an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and production in any medium, provided the author of the original work and original publication source are properly credited.Perceptions towards unsustainable supply chain practices in global, mainstream food systems are motivating a shift towards short food supply chains. Short food supply chains are developed to remove the physical and social distances between producer and consumer. Advances in digital technologies offer promise for short food supply chains, including platforms that can enable real-time data flow, create visibility, and support sustainable practices. This research aims to prioritise attractive quality requirements of short food supply chain digital platforms. The methodology consists of a literature review and Kano analysis for requirements prioritisation. The results show that the requirements span across the four Kano categories, attractive quality encompassing the largest number of requirements. The attractive quality requirements identified offer increased levels of satisfaction when present and have limited negative impact when missing. Therefore, they are considered exciting for potential users of a system. The limitations of the research and areas of future work are presented.Peer reviewe

A holistic approach to manage environmental quality by using the Kano model and social cognitive theory

Funding Information: This study has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement 798365. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 The Authors. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd Copyright: Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Since its first proposition in 1984, the Kano model has been used extensively in a variety of contexts within industries and academic research demonstrating its wide applicability. The Kano model allows for describing the relationship between an objective aspect and a subjective aspect. Yet is this relevant for environmental quality as well? In this study, we explore the cases where the Kano model is used for assessing environmental quality and its perception by consumers and identify the potential influencing factors for its application with this respect. We find that the Kano model can serve as an effective tool for converging towards environmental quality and sustainability by indicating the direction from a social and behavioral choice perspective. We propose an integration of the Kano model with Bandura's triangle (a concept of the social cognitive theory) to create an instrument for driving change of customer attitude and behavior via changing the perception of environmental quality.Peer reviewe

Some further studies on improving QFD methodology and analysis

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) starts and ends with the customer. In other words, how it ends may depend largely on how it starts. Any QFD practitioners will start with collecting the voice of the customer that reflects customer’s needs as to make sure that the products will eventually sell or the service may satisfy the customer. On the basis of those needs, a product or service creation process is initiated. It always takes a certain period of time for the product or service to be ready for the customer. The question here is whether those customer-needs may remain exactly the same during the product or service creation process. The answer would be very likely to be a ‘no’, especially in today’s rapidly changing environment due to increased competition and globalization. The focus of this thesis is placed on dealing with the change of relative importance of the customer’s needs during product or service creation process. In other words, the assumption is that there is no new need discovered along the time or an old one becomes outdated; only the relative importance change of the existing needs is dealt with. Considering the latest development of QFD research, especially the increasingly extensive use of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in QFD, this thesis aims to enhance the current QFD methodology and analysis, with respect to the change during product or service creation process, as to continually meet or exceed the needs of the customer. The entire research works are divided into three main parts, namely, the further use of AHP in QFD, the incorporation of AHP-based priorities’ dynamics in QFD, and decision making analysis with respect to the dynamics. The first part focuses on the question "In what ways does AHP, considering its strength and weakness, contribute to an improved QFD analysis?" The usefulness of AHP in QFD is demonstrated through a case study in improving higher education quality of an education institution. Furthermore, a generalized model of using AHP in QFD is also proposed. The generalized model not only provides an alternative way to construct the house of quality (HoQ), but also creates the possibility to include other relevant factors into QFD analysis, such as new product development risks. The second part addresses the question "How to use the AHP in QFD in dealing with the dynamics of priorities?" A novel quantitative method to model the dynamics of AHP-based priorities in the HoQ is proposed. The method is simple and time-efficient. It is especially useful when the historical data is limited, which is the case in a highly dynamic environment. As to further improve QFD analysis, the modeling method is applied into two areas. The first area is to enhance the use of Kano’s model in QFD by considering its dynamics. It not only extends the use of Kano’s model in QFD, but also advances the academic literature on modeling the life cycle of quality attributes quantitatively. The second area is to enhance the benchmarking part of QFD by including the dynamics of competitors’ performance in addition to the dynamics of customer’s needs. The third part deals with the question "How to make decision in a QFD analysis with respect to the dynamics in the house of quality?" Two decision making approaches are proposed to prioritize and/or optimize the technical attributes with respect to the modeling results. Considering the fact that almost all QFD translation process employs the relationship matrix, a guideline for QFD practitioners to decide whether the relationship matrix should be normalized is developed. Furthermore, a practical implication of the research work towards the possible use of QFD in helping a company develop more innovative products is also discussed. In brief, the main contribution of this thesis is in providing some novel methods and/or approaches to enhance the QFD’s use with respect to the change during product or service creation process. For scientific community, this means that the existing QFD research has been considerably improved, especially with the use of AHP in QFD. For engineering practice, a better way of doing QFD analysis, as a customer-driven engineering design tool, has been proposed. It is hoped that the research work may provide a first step into a better customer-driven product or service design process, and eventually increase the possibility to create more innovative and competitive products or services over time

Product Planning techniques: investigating the differences between research trajectories and industry expectations

According to several literature sources, Product Planning is acknowledged as a primary driver of future commercial success for new designed products, and it is schematically constituted by the identification of business opportunities and the selection of most promising alternatives. Despite the recalled relevance of Product Planning, it emerges that a marginal quantity of companies have adopted formal methods to carry out this task. The paper attempts to provide a major understanding about such a limited implementation of Product Planning techniques and other open issues emerging from the analysis of the literature concerning the initial phases of engineering design cycles. The presented study investigates the claimed benefits of methods described in the literature, the level to which such tools are diffused through educational programs in Technical Institutes, the expectations and the demands of a sample of enterprises with respect to new tools supporting Product Planning. It emerges that, whereas existing methods strive to fulfil relevant properties according to the perception of the companies, limitations come out in terms of the transfer of the proposed techniques and their perceived reliability

Urban rail transit passenger service quality evaluation based on the KANO–Entropy–TOPSIS model: the China case

In order to evaluate the URTPSQ (Urban Rail Transit Passenger Service Quality) comprehensively, find the shortage of URTPSQ, find out the difference between the actual service situation and the passenger’s expectation and demand,and provide passengers with better travel services, a passenger-oriented KANO–Entropy–TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method is proposed and applied in this paper. Firstly, a KANO model is applied to select the service quality indicators from the 24 URTPSQ evaluation sub-indicators, according to the selection results, the KANO service quality indicators of URTPSQ are constructed. Then the sensitivity of the KANO service quality indicators based on the KANO model are calculated and ranked, the PS (Passenger Satisfaction) of each KANO service quality indicator by using the Entropy–TOPSIS method is calculated and ranked. Based on the difference between the sensitivity degree rank and the satisfaction degree rank of each KANO service quality indicator, determine the service quality KANO indicators of the URTPSQ that need to be improved significantly. A case study is conducted by taking the Chengdu subway system in China as a background. The results show that the Chengdu subway operation enterprises should pay attention to the must-be demand first, then the one-dimensional demand, finally the attractive demand. The three indicators, including transfer on the same floor in the station, service quality of staffs of urban rail transit enterprises,and cleanness in the station and passenger coach, need to be improved urgently. For the managers and operators of urban rail transit system, the passengers’ must-be demand should be satisfied first if the KANO model is applied to evaluate the service. The indicators with highest sensitivity degree and lowest TOPSIS value should be improved based on the KANO–Entropy–TOPSIS model. First published online 14 December 202

Optimization of the product design through Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Analaytical Hierarchy Process (AHP): A case study in a ceramic washbasin

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Industrial Design, Izmir, 2009Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 67-79)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishx, 81 leavesQFD is a methodology, which establishes a relationship between product and customer, determines product.s sales ability and carry out it to a high level during the process.In this study, QFD methodology, which is used in several industries, was implemented in the sanitary production industry. In this purpose, the washbasin, which is called as .Potsink. produced by Vitra, was chosen and examined implementation ability of the methodology. The aim for this choice is that Potsink.s design is different from usual washbasin forms and because of this reason, some sales problems would be appeared also there are some ergonomical and functional problems was observed.In the first step, which is developed by the customer.s voice, Analytic Hierarchy Process AHP was used. The relationship, which is between product and customer.s requirements, is determined by Analytic Hierarchy Process AHP.After this step, with customer requirements and technical details, which is matched with, are put in the house of quality (HoQ). Fallowing this step, improvement ratio and sales points are taken place in the house. Finally calculate all items and evaluated

Applying the superior identification group linguistic variable to construct kano model oriented quality function deployment

This study attempts to manipulate 2-tuple linguistic variables rather than pure linguistic variables in quality function deployment (QFD) in order to significantly improve the identification of the QFD model. The Kano model, a two-dimensional quality technique, is also integrated to recognize the degree of urgency in terms of enhancing and prioritizing quality-related requirements of customers via a fuzzy linguistic quantifier with a soft majority concept to fit the optimal aggregation weights. This study also retains the goodness on the usage of multi-granularity linguistic approach to facilitate the implementation of a group decision. Simultaneously, two-dimensional analysis is performed to explain the results synthetically between relationship matrix and correlation matrix from a management perspective, capable of providing comprehensive information for the decision process. Owing to the integration of several quality and management methods, results of this study demonstrate the capability of TRIZ