Six Sigma in the Contemporary Business Environment
1 Introduction
The discerning customers nowadays are better educated and are able to recognize the quality of products or services, rather than just looking at the price. As competition between organizations grows more intense, many different factors and dimensions would be considered by the customers when they are going to measure the quality (Stevenson, 1999). In order to remain competitive among those rigorous competitions in the dynamic changing business environment, organizations have to maintain and enhance the quality of the products or services being delivered.
“Quality is consistent conformance to customers’ exceptions” (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). There is no definite definition for quality since it varies in different circumstances. For example, manufacturing would focus on producing products which are error-free and conform precisely to their design specifications while service providers would focus on providing services which are fit for its purpose. Moreover, it is subject to customer’s expectations against their perceptions of the product or service.
The Six Sigma is a quality approach to measuring, improving and managing quality and operations performance. It emphasizes the importance of reducing variation in process performance so as to achieve true customer satisfaction by delivering “products as promised, with no defects, with no early-life failures and when the product did not fail excessively in service” (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). It was first popularized by Motorola in the 1980s, and because of its successful deployment, many companies worldwide have then adopted Six Sigma, such as General Electric Company and Honeywell are very successful examples to demonstrate how it is beneficial to organizations, provided that it is implemented properly (Antony, Kumar and Banuelas, 2006).
This report is designed to demonstrate the understanding of the principles and concepts of Six Sigma, the necessities for designing,
The discerning customers nowadays are better educated and are able to recognize the quality of products or services, rather than just looking at the price. As competition between organizations grows more intense, many different factors and dimensions would be considered by the customers when they are going to measure the quality (Stevenson, 1999). In order to remain competitive among those rigorous competitions in the dynamic changing business environment, organizations have to maintain and enhance the quality of the products or services being delivered.
“Quality is consistent conformance to customers’ exceptions” (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). There is no definite definition for quality since it varies in different circumstances. For example, manufacturing would focus on producing products which are error-free and conform precisely to their design specifications while service providers would focus on providing services which are fit for its purpose. Moreover, it is subject to customer’s expectations against their perceptions of the product or service.
The Six Sigma is a quality approach to measuring, improving and managing quality and operations performance. It emphasizes the importance of reducing variation in process performance so as to achieve true customer satisfaction by delivering “products as promised, with no defects, with no early-life failures and when the product did not fail excessively in service” (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). It was first popularized by Motorola in the 1980s, and because of its successful deployment, many companies worldwide have then adopted Six Sigma, such as General Electric Company and Honeywell are very successful examples to demonstrate how it is beneficial to organizations, provided that it is implemented properly (Antony, Kumar and Banuelas, 2006).
This report is designed to demonstrate the understanding of the principles and concepts of Six Sigma, the necessities for designing,