Integration of Kano's Model into quality function deployment (QFD)

Viability of a product or service in the market depends upon the satisfaction that it can extend to its customers through quality. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a tool that gathers voice of customer (VoC) and inducting the expected features in the final product. It is also desirable that the practitioners of QFD must extend due importance to latent expectations of the customers, which in turn may fulfill overall customer satisfaction for a product or service. Kano et al. (J Jpn Soc Qual Control, 14:39-48, 1984; 1996) and Kano (2001) have suggested a method to identify the different categories of requirements through customer responses. Based on the QFD and Kano model analysis, a function has been proposed to adjust the traditional improvement ratio (Tan and Shen, Total Qual Manag 11:1141-1151, 2000) for each product or service attribute to recognize the importance of a attribute, which can be helpful in developing a product or service in such a manner that maximum customer satisfaction can be achieved. The proposed methodology has been illustrated using customer survey data.