Requirement-Oriented Engineering Characteristic Identification for a Sustainable Product–Service System: A Multi-Method Approach

Chunting Liu, Guozhu Jia and Jili Kong
Additional contact information
Chunting Liu: School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China
Guozhu Jia: School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China
Jili Kong: School of Modern Post, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 21, 1-20

Abstract: Product–service systems (PSSs) have great potential for competitiveness and sustainability. Customers’ requirements cannot be directly used in the design of a PSS. Accurate identification of customer requirements, especially hidden requirements in the product life cycle, and transformation of customer requirements into specific engineering characteristics for PSS design are urgent problems. This study proposed a systematic and whole-process framework employing specific identification processes and methods, as well as a big data analysis. A set of refined and integrated methods were used to better identify customer requirements and to transform the customer requirements into specific engineering characteristics more accurately and efficiently. We also used customers’ online review data—a huge information resource to be explored—and big data technology to improve the requirement information identification process. A case study was implemented to verify our methodology. We obtained the engineering characteristics of a smartphone PSS matching the customer requirements as well as the exact importance rankings of customer requirements and engineering characteristics. The analysis results revealed that the proposed methodology allowed PSS designers to assess the PSS requirements more specifically and accurately by providing an intuitive evaluation of the role and importance of the requirements, engineering characteristics, and their mutual interactions that were hidden or indirect.

Keywords: customer requirement; data mining; fuzzy analytic hierarchy process; refined Kano; refined QFD; engineering characteristics; product–service system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/8880/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/8880/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:21:p:8880-:d:434955

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().