service design by identification and prioritization of customer demands in kano model: a step towards the quality function deployment (qfd) and the productivity improvement

rail transportation is the best option of transport in many countries of the world. one of the factors that increase the share of rail passenger transportation is developing rail transportation of passenger by increasing level of customer satisfaction in this type of service. the main purpose of this paper is service design by identification and prioritization of customer demands in kano model. the statistical population consisted of travelers who used the iran south-east railway services. to determine the sample size, as there was not any certain statistical test as research requirement, we used the saturated sample, so that we selected samples as long as the opinions became converged. semi-structured interviews, interviews with experts and a questionnaire for a two-week period in january 2014 were used to collect data. the final questionnaire was compiled and its validity was confirmed after obtaining the expert's points of view and fixing deficiencies and problems. cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to assess the reliability of questionnaire. descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the obtained information from the questionnaires. kano model, qfd method in the spss and excel were used for the inferential statistics. data analysis in the kano model and qfd method was done in excel software; and spss16 software was used to measure the reliability. after identifying the characteristics of service with the help of experts, quality function development (qfd) was used to prioritize them and finally, required services has been ranked and proper selection of personnel, upgrade facilities of rail and the exact timing of train schedules are 3 first priority, if first six priorities are done, almost half of the costumers will be satisfied.

Keywords: quality; kano model; quality function deployment (qfd); rail transportation.