An approach to rule extraction for product service system configuration that considers customer perception

Abstract

At present, manufacturers tend to bundle a product with its related services as a product service system, to meet customer needs and achieve competitive advantage. Configuring a product service system involves selecting and combining appropriate product and service components, to satisfy individual customer needs. One crucial step to rapidly configure a product service system is to develop formalised configuration rules, which show the relationships between product service components and customer needs, including those expressed as perception needs. In this study, a rough set-based approach is proposed to acquire configuration rules. First, an information table is built by combining the results of factor analysis and questionnaire survey. Then, customer segmentation is accomplished by clustering. Based on the information table and customer segmentation, a dominance-based rough set approach is used to extract the configuration rules. Finally, a weighbridge is selected for the case study to validate the proposed approach.

Keywords:

• product service system
• configuration
• customer perception
• rough set
• rule extraction

Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 70932004G0209] and [grant number 71072061G020801]. The authors also wish to sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for providing constructive comments that helped to improve the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.