Applying SWARA approach and refined Kano model to classify and rank customer requirements, case study: automotive industry in Portugal

Abstract

Companies aim to increase the quality of products and competitiveness to gain and retain customers. This study proposes a new approach for identifying and prioritising customer requirements (CRs) to improve black uniformity as a luminance characteristic on the surface of a display by evaluating the CRs. The refined Kano and stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) was applied to rank the 112 CRs identified into main categories: 1) technical; 2) quality; 3) delivery; 4) sustainability; 5) cost to develop the product. To validate the approach, an example is performed on automotive display’ CRs. The findings showed that mechanical and delivery CRs are critical. Today, climate change is a significant challenge and a severe customer concern. Although sustainability of CRs is not classed as essential items in the production process, suppliers must be diligent in providing them. The results help to improve the automotive industry and other production systems.