Survey of customer expectation and satisfaction: preliminary research of a modular product design approach for sheep cage design

Abstract

This study aims to produce a modular sheep cage design. Feeding, maintenance and integrated waste management are taking into account in the design. The modular and integrated product design provides advantages such as (1) easy way of making and modifying the product, (2) enabling the utilization of existing facilities such as shade, (3) giving the user a sense of convenience as the waste can be processed and not being a source of pollution. The Modular Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method is applied to identify modules associated with the customer needs of the product. A survey about customer expectation and satisfaction was conducted in order to evaluate the gap of both. The highest value of gap between customer expectation and satisfaction of products indicates that the customer needs are the focus of the problems. The most important customer needs are considered in modification and improvement of design. These are (1) the cage is not easy to fall down, (2) the sheep cage can last for long time, (3) it uses a strong frame, (4) the roof section materials is not easy to leak, and (5) It can be used even if one part of the cage is damaged.