Importance Of Customer Requirements Research Articles

Desenvolvimento de uma embalagem para transporte de helicoides

To facilitate the transportation and storage of products, packaging plays a key role. The present article refers to the development of a project, which aimed to develop a packaging for the transport of heavy parts from the agricultural sector, especially for helicoids used in harves ters, in order to optimize the loading and unloading time, considering protection aspects during transportation and reliability in delivery. The present work was carried out from the survey of customer requirements and subsequently weighted and hierarchized through the quality function deployment tool. B ased on the importance of customer requirements, project requirements were elaborated with expert input. Then the conceptual framework of the product was developed. F rom the main functions, secondary functions were defined to create packaging designs, where two combinations of possible solutions were presented, one using wood as the main raw material and the other made using rotomolded plastic. The project was detailed and the wood packaging prototy pe was created considering also the costs.

An improved FMEA analysis method based on QFD and TOPSIS theory

In order to solve the fuzziness in calculating the risk priority number in traditional failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA), a ranking method of failure mode improvement priorities based on technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution theory was proposed firstly. An integrated analysis model based on FMEA and quality function deployment (QFD) was proposed to fully consider the interaction between various failure modes and the customer satisfaction degree with product performance, economy, and service. The importance of customer requirements is obtained by using the analytic hierarchy process, and the importance of technical characteristics is obtained by using weighted geometric average algorithm. Then the importance of the technical characteristics is converted to the correction coefficient to the FMEA evaluation, so as to obtain the relative harmfulness of each failure model. The proposed integrated model makes up for the deficiencies in FMEA that the relevant information of customer requirements and technical characteristics can not be used as the basis for judging failure mode improvement priorities, and the expansion of each stage of QFD can provide information and basis for the analysis and evaluation of the failure modes in the FMEA. A case of failure modes and effect analysis of a certain diesel engine fuel system was taken as an example to illustrate the proposed method.

A novel method of design elements based on EGM and fuzzy QFD

In the study, based on the evaluation grid method (EGM) and fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD), taking the design of cultural and creative products as an example, we explored the importance of customer requirements and design elements and the correlation among various design elements. In this study, the combination of EGM and fuzzy QFD could avoid their respective defects. Firstly, we used the EGM to collect and analyse customer requirements and design elements. Secondly, we calculated the weight values of the customer requirements with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Thirdly, we established the fuzzy relation matrix between customer requirements and design elements. In addition, the importance of design elements was calculated based on the fuzzy theory. At the end, the result of this study has drawn a conclusion including the significance ordering of the design elements within the design dimension and the correlation between each design elements. Clear quantification of design elements has a guiding role in the design process, and the research methods of combining EGM with fuzzy QFD can solve many problems in the research process. Hope that the research and results can be used for reference in the future design work.

The voice of the customer in the design of organized retail stores

Subject area Marketing, retail. Study level/applicability The case study is specific to the marketing demographics of Indian shoppers with respect to organized retail stores, and therefore, the inter-relationships between various design elements and the relative importance of certain parameters discussed in the text may not follow the same pattern elsewhere in the world. Case overview The case emulates the real-life situation of an organized retail store, Super Mart, to understand the inculcation of voice of the customer in the design of organized retail stores in India. It gives insights about factors which influence the shopping intent of customers while giving information about the inter-relationships among various design characteristics. It also gives an idea about inter-dependence between design characteristics and customer requirements. This is followed by certain questions, the responses to which can be interpreted from the text and the data provided therein. Expected learning outcomes The case aims to educate its audience about the following aspects of organized retail business: factors influencing offline shopping intent of customers; relative order of importance of customer requirements with respect to organized retail stores; inter-relationships between various design elements; and future trends in the organized retail space. Such a knowledge would help hone the skills of the next generation of business leaders in the retail space. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

A comprehensive approach to handle the dynamics of customer’s needs in Quality Function Deployment based on linguistic variables

Article history: Received January 15, 2013 Accepted October 12, 2013 Available online October 19 2013 In the contexture of a customer-driven goods or service design process, a well-timed update of customer’s requirements may not only serve as a necessity indicator to observe how things change over time, but also it incorporates the firms a better ground to interoperate different strategies to meet the future needs of its customer. This paper proposes a systematic methodology to deal with the customer needs’ dynamics, in terms of their relative weights, in the QFD. Compared with previous research, the contribution of this paper is fourfold. First, it applies some linguistic variables to get preferences of customers and experts to determine the relative importance of customer requirements (CRs) and the relationships between customer requirements and engineering characteristics (ECs). Second, it proposes the implementation of a forecasting technique. Third, it describes more comprehensively on how future uncertainty in the weights of customer’s needs could be estimated and transmitted into the design attributes. Fourth, it proposes the implementation of a quantitative approach, which takes into account the decision maker’s attitude towards risk to optimize the QFD decision making analysis. Finally, a real-world application of QFD is provided to demonstrate the practical applicability of the proposed methodology. © 2014 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Designing a new service in a university language centre

PurposeThis paper aims to present the design of a new service in a self‐access language centre of a university in Hong Kong. A language action literacy program is being designed to promote independent learning and to support undergraduates in developing preferred qualities, including what the Kano Model would classify as excitement qualities.Design/methodology/approachQuality Function Deployment (QFD) is the decision support tool for selecting the literacy program contents to echo the Voice of Customer (VOC). The QFD exercises undertaken include: a telephone survey with 12 employers rating the importance of customer requirements; the program designers selecting program contents that match the customer requirements; determining the relationship between the customer requirements and the program contents; calculating the importance weighting of program contents; and determining the correlation between the program contents. The categorization of qualities by the Kano model is followed when discussing customer satisfaction.FindingsIndependent learning was rated as the most important of 20 customer requirements, and excitement qualities such as Critical thinking, Innovation, Creativity were rated as important. The QFD exercises led to the recommendations that seven types of literacy (e.g. Critical literacy, Activism & advocacy) and functional grammar should be prioritized as main program contents for empowering undergraduates to make an impact on a community or profession.Research limitations/implicationsSince the sample size of the importance survey was small, the new program would have to be evaluated by larger‐scale surveys after piloting.Originality/valueA review of literature found no report on QFD‐based design of self‐access language centre services; this study is likely the first of its kind.

English

Determining the preferences of product attributes for customer value is a crucial issue driven by multiple requirements on the customers. However, arising from mental and psychological phenomena factors, people’s judgments on the importance of customer requirements is imprecise and vague. The fuzzy analysis hierarchy process (FAHP) with an extent analysis is utilized to determine preferences toward customer value to overcome this uncertainty in theAnalytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). With this method, the researcher can use triangular fuzzy numbers for the pair wise comparisons and derive the weight vectors. Based on the calculations results, the manufacturers could implement product design and quality management to prioritize customer requirements; besides, retailers are also able to understand what kind of benefits or performances are customers prefer and thereby develop strategic appeal for them.   Key words: Fuzzy AHP, product attributes, extent analysis, customer value.

Using AHP and TOPSIS approaches in customer-driven product design process

Customer-driven product design process is critically an important part of concurrent engineering (CE). Many new principles and approaches, such as quality function deployment (QFD) and axiomatic design, have been introduced to help designers identify the relationship between customer requirements and design characteristics. However, identification of customer requirements and evaluation of design alternatives are still heavily reliant on designer's experience and knowledge. This will affect the efficiency and effectiveness of the customer-driven design process and even make the development of design automation become more difficult. This paper presents a framework that integrates the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to assist designers in identifying customer requirements and design characteristics, and help achieve an effective evaluation of the final design solution. The proposed approach starts with applying the AHP method to evaluate the relative overall importance of customer requirements and design characteristics. The TOPSIS method is then used to perform competitive benchmarking. Finally, a search strategy is employed to set target values for design characteristics of the recommended design alternative. The performance of the proposed approach is illustrated and validated using a personal digital assistant (PDA) design example. The results show that the proposed approach is capable of helping designers to systematically consider relevant design information and effectively determine the key design objectives and optimal conceptual alternatives.

A Practical Method for Quantifying Eco‐efficiency Using Eco‐design Support Tools

SummaryEco‐efficiency at the product level is defined as product value per unit of environmental impact. In this paper we present a method for quantifying the eco‐efficiency using quality function deployment (QFD) and life‐cycle impact assessment (LCIA). These well‐known tools are widely used in the manufacturing industry.QFD, which is one of the methods used in product development based on consumer preferences, is introduced to calculate the product value. An index of the product value is calculated as the weighted average of improvement rates of quality characteristics. The importance of customer requirements, derived from the QFD matrix, is applied.Environmental impacts throughout a product life cycle are calculated based on an LCIA method widely used in Japan. By applying the LCIA method of endpoint type, the endpoint damage caused by various life‐cycle inventories is calculated. Willingness to pay is applied to integrate it into a single index.Eco‐design support tools, namely, the life‐cycle planning (LCP) tool and the life‐cycle assessment (LCA) tool, have already been developed. Using these tools, data required for calculation of the eco‐efficiency of products can be collected. The product value is calculated based on QFD data stored in the LCP tool and the environmental impact is calculated using the LCA tool.Case studies of eco‐efficiency are adopted and the adequacy of this method is clarified. Several advantages of this method are characterized.

Determining the Importance Weights for the Customer Requirements in QFD Using a Fuzzy AHP with an Extent Analysis Approach

In the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) process, determining the importance weights for the customer requirements is an essential and crucial process. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been used to determine the importance weights for product planning, but this has occurred mainly in crisp (non-fuzzy) decision applications. However, human judgment on the importance of customer requirements is always imprecise and vague. To make up for this deficiency in the AHP, a fuzzy AHP with an extent analysis approach is proposed to determine the importance weights for the customer requirements. In the method, triangular fuzzy numbers are used for the pairwise comparison of a fuzzy AHP. By using the extent analysis method and the principles for the comparison of fuzzy numbers, one can derive the weight vectors. The new approach can improve the imprecise ranking of customer requirements inherited from studies based on the conventional AHP. Furthermore, the fuzzy AHP with extent analysis is simple and easy to implement to prioritize customer requirements in the QFD process compared with the conventional AHP. This paper uses an example of a hair dryer design to illustrate the proposed approach.