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

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.