INTEGRATION OF QFD AND DEA METHODS TOGETHER TO PRIORITISE CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS: THE CASE OF A SERVICE ORGANISATION

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a method used to transform customer expectations into technical requirements and to identify the technical requirements that need to be improved to meet these expectations. QFD stands out as a method that has found wide application in the literature and industry in terms of its advantage in transforming relatively more abstract customer expectations into concrete product and process parameters and its ease of application. One of the most important disadvantages of the method is that in the prioritization of technical requirements related to customer expectations, criteria such as the cost of the technical requirement in question, the implementation time of the necessary improvement activities, etc., are not considered. In this study, an approach in which Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methods are applied together with the QFD method to take into account the costs in the prioritization of technical requirements is presented. According to the results of a sample application carried out in a cafe business to test the approach, it is concluded that taking costs into account in the prioritization process should be prioritized in order to meet customer expectations.