A case study in solving customer complaints based on the 8Ds method and Kano model

Abstract

Service economics is growing in importance, and satisfying customers is a major objective of enterprises. Product or service quality involves knowing what the customers’ needs are and how to fulfill those needs to meet their expectations and requirements, especially when customer complaints appear. In this study, the Kano model is used to distinguish various product and service satisfaction or dissatisfaction types, based on customers’ opinions. The 8 disciplines (8Ds) problem-solving method is a corrective action procedure used to identify and correct causes of non-conformance and is adopted in this article when the customer complains about a product or service. A case study in this article is based on the 8Ds method and Kano model, which provides a structured and flexible framework for a customer-oriented management system to drive the improvement of business performance. By way of different histogram comparisons, a paired t test, and Cpk estimations, a control model is established to identify what the quality level is. After completing the corrective actions and excluding the variation of sheet metal hardness factor, the defect rate decreased from 28% to 0.5%, and this improvement resulted in gains of at least 22 million New Taiwan dollars.