Comparative study
A comparative study is carried out to validate the effectiveness of the A-Kano
method. The study involves three independent procedures to design products
based on the same set of survey data. In the first procedure, the FRs are classified using the Kano method proposed by DuMouchel (Berger et al.,
1993). In the second procedure, the respective FRs are classified using the
Kano classifiers proposed in the A-Kano method. In both methods, the FR
classification is applied to assist the generation of product configurations. In
the third procedure, the configuration indices of the FRs are used to guide
the design of product configurations following the decision framework presented
in Section 3. The merits of the three methods are compared according
to the product performance in terms of the Kano evaluator. In this case study,
the results of only one market segment (s1) are presented for purpose of brevity.
The analysis of the other market segments can be carried out following the
same procedures.