Title: Six Sigma and Total Quality Management (TQM): similarities, differences and relationship

Authors: Souraj Salah, Juan A. Carretero, Abdur Rahim

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of New Brunswick, P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3, Canada. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of New Brunswick, P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3, Canada. ' Faculty of Business Administration, University of New Brunswick, P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3, Canada

Abstract: Industries are continuously facing fierce competition and the challenge of meeting increasing demands for higher quality products at economic costs. The success of an organisation is directly related to how effective its implementation of continuous improvement (CI) is. For any manufacturing system, Total Quality Management (TQM) and Six Sigma are important CI methodologies. Effective understanding of these methodologies and their relationship will provide an industry with a competitive advantage. Many industrial organisations today are using either TQM or Six Sigma as the core for their CI efforts. There is a lot of dispute on which methodology is superior, how they relate to each other, what the common grounds are and what their differences are. As such, the relationship between TQM and Six Sigma is worth further investigation. In this paper, TQM and Six Sigma are introduced followed by a thorough comparison. More particularly, this work investigates their similarities, differences and how they relate to each other. Finally, this research introduces how they fit together in order to develop a new structure for integrating them together which will provide an improved approach for CI.

Keywords: six sigma; TQM; total quality management; continuous improvement; kaizen; process improvement; competitive advantage; integration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSCA.2009.028095

International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage, 2009 Vol.5 No.3, pp.237 - 250

Published online: 04 Sep 2009 *

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