Title: Total performance excellence - a model to implement Six Sigma in service organisations

Authors: Muthuswamy Shanmugaraja; M. Nataraj; Nallasamy Gunasekaran

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Government College of Technology, Thadagam Road, Coimbatore – 641 013, Tamilnadu, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Government College of Technology, Thadagam Road, Coimbatore – 641 013, Tamilnadu, India ' Angel College of Engineering and Technology, Angel Nagar, Dharapuram Main Road, Tirupur – 641 665, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract: Recently, the importance of Six Sigma for quality management has been focussed by many researchers in service organisations. However, the nature of services and the ways using which the customers tend to evaluate the service quality pose a vital challenge for Six Sigma. The gaps and quality dimensions need to be identified to address the difficulties that service organisations encounter when using Six Sigma to improve quality and reduce costs. To overcome this deficiency, a model named as total performance excellence (TPE) has been proposed in this paper. The TPE model has been developed after studying researches reported in literature surmounting Six Sigma and service quality arenas. In this model, three techniques and tools which are commonly applied in this arena have been formed as the core. After that, TPE model has been incorporated with Six Sigma's define, measure, analyse, improve and control (DMAIC) improvement methodology with house of quality matrix of QFD and few innovative tools of TRIZ. The working of TPE model is illustrated by presenting a real-time case study.

Keywords: total performance excellence; TPE; services; service quality; quality improvement; quality management; six sigma; define measure analyse improve control; DMAIC; house of quality; HoQ; quality function deployment; QFD; TRIZ; customer satisfaction; challenges.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSCA.2012.053471

International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage, 2012 Vol.7 No.2/3/4, pp.209 - 242

Received: 11 Aug 2012
Accepted: 03 Mar 2013
Published online: 22 Apr 2015 *

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