A fuzzy logic based approach for modeling quality and reliability related customer satisfaction in the automotive domain

This paper presents an approach to assess quality and reliability related customer satisfaction from field failure data at each individual customer level. The quality satisfaction has been modeled based on number of failures and severity of failures, while, reliability satisfaction has been modeled based on number of visits to dealer and time span between visits. The satisfaction modeled at an individual vehicle (customer) level is further aggregated to a vehicle model level to determine overall satisfaction of customers with that specific vehicle model. A fuzzy logic approach is used to construct the satisfaction model. A grid search technique is used to tune the model parameters such that the output of the model for specific vehicle models matches with survey based ratings assigned to the vehicle models.