Service Satisfaction Evaluation of Customer Preference-Driven Public Warehousing Product Service Systems for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises in an Industrial Park

Abstract

Facing fierce market competitions and fast technological transformation, manufacturing enterprises eagerly aspire to cut down investments in non-core businesses with the low return such as logistics, warehousing, and machine maintenance. In the context of service-oriented manufacturing (SOM), these non-core businesses are expected to be undertaken by third-party service providers in a centralized product + service manner. Supported by SOM principles, public warehousing product-service system (PW-PSS) is defined as integration of public warehouses and related warehousing services (e.g., raw material purchasing, work-in-progress storing/sorting/monitoring, and finished products packaging/distribution) for different manufacturing enterprises in an industrial park (IP). PW-PSS especially benefits for small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who are suffering from a heavy investment and management burden of self-built warehouses. To well operate the PW-PSS, third-party service providers must improve the service satisfaction degree of customers (i.e., manufacturing enterprises) to attract their continuous cooperation. This paper proposes a service satisfaction evaluation (SSE) method considering customer preferences to ensure the PW-PSS solutions more reliable and reasonable. First, the standard impact loss method is adopted to determine the initial weights of SSE indexes, and then the Kano model is used to adjust the above weights based on the consideration of customer preferences. Second, according to whether an SSE index is profitoriented or cost-oriented, a positive or negative distance is obtained based on a distance average solution method. Finally, an example is given to verify the proposed method. It is expected that SSE can provide a decision-making basis for SMEs in an IP to choose optimal PW-PSS solutions. INDEX TERMS Customer preference, product service system (PSS), public warehouse, service-oriented manufacturing (SOM), service satisfaction evaluation (SSE). QINGTAO LIU received the B.S. degree in mechanical design, manufacturing, and automation from the North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Zhengzhou, China, in 2006, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in manufacturing and automation from Chang'an University, Xi'an, China, in 2009 and 2011, respectively, where he is currently a Lecturer with the Department of Manufacturing Automation, School of Construction Machinery. His current research interests include green manufacturing and sustainable manufacturing.