Title: An empirical study about the effect of Six Sigma CSFs on quality and cost

Authors: Mi Sook Lee

Addresses: Graduate School of Business Administration, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 1370, Korea

Abstract: The number of companies that have adopted Six Sigma has been increasing continuously because of the importance of quality management. Since the introduction of Six Sigma in 1996, many service and manufacturing companies in Korea have taken advantage of it though some failed to implement it. At this time, an empirical study of Six Sigma will be helpful in the examination of the current status of Six Sigma implementation in Korea. This study investigates the Six Sigma critical success factors (CSFs) that are most widely used in Korea. These are broken down into eight factors: business strategy, management involvement, culture change, communication, organisation infrastructure, resource investment, training and understanding Six Sigma tools. Quality improvement and total cost reduction are used as performance variables. The relationship of CSFs to the performance variables is modelled using the structural equation modelling (SEM) and the hypotheses of the relationship are tested.

Keywords: six sigma; critical success factors; quality improvement; total cost reduction; service industries; manufacturing industry; South Korea; services; business strategy; management involvement; organisational culture; cultural change; communication; organisation infrastructure; resource investment; training; structural equation modelling; performance variables; economics; business research.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEBR.2010.035704

International Journal of Economics and Business Research, 2010 Vol.2 No.6, pp.568 - 580

Published online: 03 Oct 2010 *

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