Quantification and integration of Kano’s model into QFD for customer-focused product design

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a systematic method for customer-driven product design. Despite its advantages, QFD has a problem in its assumption regarding the relationship between customer satisfaction and the fulfillment of customer requirements. Kano’s model explains very well customer requirements and their impacts on customer satisfaction. Meanwhile, Kano’s model is not as systematic as QFD for the relationship between customer requirements and satisfaction but is often qualitative. The integration of both methods can help address their individual problems to better understand customer needs for product design. This study presents a new approach to quantify and integrate Kano’s model into the QFD. This approach analyzes customer requirements based on Kano’s model by quantifying the relationship between customer requirements and satisfaction. The level of importance is more accurately calculated for each customer requirement. Both qualitative and quantitative results of Kano’s model can be integrated into the QFD. Potentially promising quality attributes that are often ignored can be effectively addressed. A case is demonstrated to show the effectiveness of this approach with automobile interior design.