Analysis Of Customers’ Requirements And Satisfaction For Supporting Product-service Systems Development

Research motivation. Product-service systems suppliers provide value-added to theircustomers by combining products and services into individualized solutions, which createsunique benefits for the customers. This brings many new advantages both for the producerand the customer, but implies new design methods which are characterized by a strongcustomer involvement. Only then the provider is aware of how the added-value is actuallycreated to customers, and can anticipate the upcoming opportunities, benefits andimprovements. This research is motivated by the analysis of the customers’ requirements andsatisfaction for supporting Product-Service System (PSS) design. This analysis is conductedwithin the market of tires in cooperation with MICHELIN Company implanted in China, aspart of their PSS development named “Michelin Fleet Solutions”.Problem statement. The specificity of PSS implies new design methods in order tomatch the market, because customers are much more involved within PSS activities than fortraditional businesses dealing with products only. The goal of these design methods is toallow the PSS provider to have a better knowledge of his customers’ requirements and howthese may evolve along the time.Methodology employed. The first part of this research has been focused on theidentification of the particular requirements about tires features and of the services associated.27features are identified during this step and classified into5categories. Then, aquestionnaire is designed to collect the evaluations of72customers from10differentcompanies about each of these27features. The customers are asked on their satisfaction, onthe relative importance that they give to each factor, and on the category of importance (Kanocategories) in which they classify the factors. As a third step we conduct a principalcomponent analysis (PCA) on the datasets extracted from the answers of the questionnairesafter the data formatting. This allows to validate the model by eliminating redundantinformation contained in correlated factors. Over the27satisfaction factors that have beenidentified initially and evaluated by the customers, only20factors have been retained in therefined model with PCA. The fourth step is to carry out a regression analysis to obtain the relative influence of each group (performance, safety, quality, brand, services) on the overallcustomer satisfaction.Results and Findings. It has been found that brand, quality and services are thecategories which have the most influence on improving customer satisfaction. This has beenconfirmed by the Kano analysis. Indeed, we found that basic factors are “performance” and“safety”, whereas “brand”,“quality” and “services” are the attractive factors. It has also beenfound that the Kano categories have an evolution which is correlated to the experience of thecustomers with services. Indeed, the requirements have proved to evolve fromindifferent/attractive requirements to one-dimensional/must-be requirements.Implications for the company. The findings of this research allow Michelin to predicton which factors it has to focus in order to keep its leading position over the time. Indeed, hehas to concentrate on attractive features (services, brand, and quality) and to maintain a stronglevel of performance on basic features (tires’ performance and safety).Limitations. However, the analysis conducted has several limitations. First, thisresearch has been conducted with limited time (one year) including the time to identify anindustrial partner to conduct the research. Thus, a single survey has been done on a limitedamount of customers. Second, this research has launched the data collection process withinMichelin’s PSS and was the first interaction of this type with the customers and thefundamental structure of customers’ requirements and their evolution along the time has beenestablished, but the model presented would need to be confirmed and improved by regularsurveys.Implications for the future. This Master’s thesis ends with several indications forfurther opportunities of research in collaboration with Michelin’s PSS. Severalrecommendations are also given to promote the integration of services to each customer.According to the findings of this research, this process would stimulate the evolution to evenmore efficient PSS. The method and findings of the research would need to be continuedthrough Michelin’s PSS evolution. This could be potentially achieved by continuing todevelop the link which has been created between Michelin and the Department of IndustrialEngineering and Management of shanghai Jiaotong University.