An integrated AHP-DEMATEL-QFD-FBS framework for designing an in-carriage intelligent delivery cart for China’s high-speed rail

To address the problem that manual delivery services cannot adequately meet the needs of complex service scenarios in crowded high-speed rail cars in China, this study proposes an integrated design framework for in-carriage intelligent delivery carts. User needs were collected through questionnaire surveys, semi-structured interviews, and behavioral observation, and a need indicator system for high-speed rail in-carriage delivery services was constructed. AHP was used to calculate the initial weights of need indicators, and DEMATEL was applied to revise the interrelationships among indicators. The House of Quality in QFD was used to transform user needs into product technical specifications. The FBS model was further introduced to complete the step-by-step mapping among technical specifications, product functions, user behaviors, and product structures. Finally, an expert evaluation panel used the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to validate the design scheme. The scheme validation results showed that the overall product design scheme reached a good level. This indicates that the framework can effectively support need transformation and scheme generation for intelligent delivery carts in complex in-carriage service scenarios, and can provide a methodological reference for the design of intelligent service equipment in high-speed rail cars.