An empirical study on the model of aged home-care service process improvement for the elders

The purpose of this study is to develop a model for the improvement of aged home-care service. According to the literature, degenerated services can strongly affect the efficiency of a service system. However, most previous studies attempted to solve this problem tend to be of conceptual nature. In contrast, this study extends Yu and Shie (2017)'s study and proposes a service-oriented innovation model by SERVQUAL-Kano model, Fuzzy Failure Mode Effect Analyze (Fuzzy FMEA) and TRIZ methodology. An integrated SERVQUAL and KANO model is used to analyze the potential service failures in the service process. Then, FMEA is employed to diagnose the possible causes and effects of the service failure model. Finally, TRIZ is used to develop the innovative solution for improving the service process. A case study of an aged home-care service agency is conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model, and a Multiple-criteria decision-making method, TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution) is used to evaluate the priority of the candidate innovative solution. A post-survey was conducted to assess the improvement of service process and the advantages of the proposed model and the implications are summarized at the end of this article.