Abstract
This paper presents a case study using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method to identify urban public transport users’ needs and requests and to improve service quality in urban public passenger transport in Belgrade. In order to determine users’ satisfaction, a direct interview – survey a sample of 15000 of urban public passenger transport system users, according to the defined questionnaire has been performed. Results of these interviews are used as input in the first stage of QFD method. An overall unit of eight features and a total of 48 sub-features were defined, which describes all aspects of quality of system and services in urban public passenger transport. The results show that for maximizing effects of quality of service improvement and satisfying customers’ requirements, the public transport service providers and managers in Belgrade should focus primarily on the service reliability and vehicle elements. The two most important quality of service sub-features in urban public passenger transport system in Belgrade based on frequency of statements of users was regularity with 4896 (32.64%) and vehicle comfort (not crowded vehicles) with 3446 (22.97%) statements. Based on the service features analysis within the house of quality, it was defined that the biggest influence is generated through system functioning parameters (reliability): frequency with relative importance 22.0%, staff (drivers) with relative importance 14.0% and headway with relative importance 13.0%. Based on absolute importance the greatest importance should be assigned to vehicle frequency – rank 1, staff (drivers) – rank 2 and headway – rank 3.
Highlights
Determination of user’s satisfaction in order to improve quality of service presents procedures of system-based and system-managed process of collection, processing, selection, analysis and presentation of selected data (Tica 2011)
A user becomes the main party in the servicing process and the final judge when it comes to service quality
This paper presents a case study using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method to identify urban public transport users’ needs and requests and to improve service quality in urban public passenger transport in Belgrade
Summary
Determination of user’s satisfaction in order to improve quality of service presents procedures of system-based and system-managed process of collection, processing, selection, analysis and presentation of selected data (Tica 2011). In urban public passenger transport, service quality is an aspect influencing travel user choices, defined as customer perception of how well a service meets or exceeds expectations (Parasuraman et al 1988). This paper presents a case study using QFD method to identify urban public transport users’ needs and requests and to improve service quality in urban public passenger transport in Belgrade. Basic research objectives are: –– identification of users’ needs and requests regarding the quality of service in urban public transport; –– ranking of quality features importance for users (expected quality of service); –– measuring the users’ satisfaction level (perceived quality of service); –– comparative analysis of changes in users’ expectations and satisfaction with the quality of service in public transport vs individual transport (system competitive benchmarking). Procedure of the QFD method first stage implementation is described, starting from defining the features and subfeatures of quality of service and their importance in urban public passenger transport system in Belgrade.
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