Knowledge Nuggets- Part 1- KANO Principle

KANO PRINCIPLE - USEFUL FOR CUSTOMER NEEDS PRIORITIZATION AND PROJECT AREA SELECTION

The significance of Kano principle in the Six Sigma Journey wrt in understanding and prioritizing Customer Needs and expectations is immense. It gives clarity and perspective into customer needs.
For example: typically, if I take / collect customer needs for a Car. The following can be the laundry list of Needs.

• Fuel efficiency
• Comfortable car
• Low noise – quite
• Car to start at the first crank
• Good leg space
• Safe to speed the car
• Excellent breaking mechanism
• Good entertainment features
• Wonderful design
• Excellent upholsteries
• Good speakers

and so on ……
Now the team need to know which one to focus. That’s where the Kano Principle can be applied.
Let’s look at what Kano says - Needs can be classified in to three categories

1. Must haves
   • A feature needs to be there in the product. Presence of which will not satisfy but absence or failure will irritate the customer or use
2. Exciters
   • Customer himself / herself cannot image / think such a feature is possible
   • Inherent for the product / service to have
   • When provided customer will be delighted to have such a feature
   • Also once provided, over a period (depends on the product what duration this excite will last for ...) exciters will become must haves.
3. Performance
   • Its linear by nature
   • Can also be termed as one dimensional
   • More and more you provide or improve a feature it is considered as better and better performance
   • This will evoke more and more satisfaction

Let me share my personal random experience for the second category Exciters since other two categories are straight forward for a supplier to provide:

• I was having a workshop in one of the resort couple of months back. I didn’t do the check in earlier in the morning and went straight to the workshop.
• After the day’s work I entered into the room and started observing the room to familiarize myself in terms things available, observe how neatly the bed is done etc.,
• One important item which many of us use immediately is TV, at least in my case. But to my surprise the TV first showed a welcome message with my name in the screen.
• Though it was just a simple thing, but it created an excitement feeling for sure.
• In case of hospitality industry unlike in a tangible product it is a challenge and difficult to excite a customer.

 In the car example above ( listed customer expectations )  if the team need to select a project out of so many customer needs from the list, lets apply Kano Principle. According to me the classification as follows:

1. Must haves
   • Low noise – quite
• Car to start at the first crank 
• Safe to speed the car
• Excellent breaking mechanism
2. Exciters
   • Good leg space
   • Good speakers
   • Wonderful design
   • Good entertainment features
   • Excellent upholsteries
3. Performance
   1. Fuel efficiency

When a six-sigma project is chosen the following are the important rules after completing the Kano categories

1.  Primary focus on the Must Haves and Performance categories.
2. If Must haves are not yet defect free and having lot of issues, then organization should not focus on Must Haves. Reason being if must haves are having defects and customer returns, customer dissatisfaction and so on … it is futile to bring in Exciter in the product or service.
3. Second priority can be the performance category.
4. Third priority to be given to Exciters
   • One caution: Exciters are usually a surprise element to the customer. If the feature provided bothers the customer then it will turn in to irritable element / feature.

Will come back with my next Knowledge Nuggets 2 on CTQ ( Critical to Quality) Drill Down

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