Business Improvement Strategies Research Articles

Key Criticisms of Six Sigma: A Systematic Literature Review

Six Sigma has been one of the most popular initiatives to improve management processes over the past few decades. Amidst the success stories on the Six Sigma, there exist some literature studies on the criticisms of Six Sigma. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the existing literature on the criticisms of Six Sigma through a systematic literature review. The criticisms need to be analyzed so that there is growth in the knowledge and understanding of Six Sigma. This paper analyzes literature through various electronic databases such as Academic Source Premier (EBSCO), Google Scholar, Business Source Premier (EBSCO), Emerald Insight, IEEE Xplore Digital Library, JSTOR, ProQuest, Science Direct, Taylor & Francis, PubMed, Wiley, Inderscience, Scopus, and World Public Library. Sixty-one relevant articles are found and analyzed in depth. This paper finds 12 major themes of criticisms on Six Sigma. Based on the findings, 16 research directions are offered. Amidst the plethora of literature review on the success of Six Sigma, this is the first comprehensive systematic literature review on the criticisms of Six Sigma. The authors firmly believe that such criticisms will help the academicians as well as the practitioners to understand some of the rudimentary gaps in implementing Six Sigma as a business improvement strategy.

Coming up with a Successful Innovation Process in an Organization

Innovation is a collaborative process by which organizations abandon old paradigms and make significant advances. Innovative ideas come from several sources, including unreasonable demands or goals and time pressures. However, there are many blocks to innovation. An innovative idea is not helpful to an organization unless it is tested and implemented. The perfect solution is sometimes there; as a vision, a thought, a dream or just a wish. But it is often far too complex for an individual to take it into reality. There are many examples of individuals who have great ideas but do nothing with them. Their organizations do not even know of these concepts. Unfortunately, these ideas die. They die because the creator kills it! They may recognize that the idea may negatively impact their job or the job of their co- workers. They do not know how to explore the idea to take it from a vision to a reality. Furthermore, They rationalize that no one would ever agree on how to structure such their concepts or pay for them. Just how many innovative ideas in your organizations regularly go nowhere because they are not linked to overall Business Improvement Strategies. In order to protect innovative ideas, organizations need to create a forum for the Innovation Process.

A system dynamics model of financial flow in supply chains: a case study

The article discusses the operational and financial relationships among the channel members of a supply chain comprising of a manufacturing company and a distributor. This research simulates the financial system that enables a more accurate diagnosis of disaggregated metrics “Cash to Cash”, considering different interactions between material flow and the financial flow of the two links, manufacturer and distributor. This model considers the feedback loops between material flow models and financial models without which some interactions are lost during simulation. The proposed diagnostic method which incorporates an eclectic process re-engineering practices and state of the art of dynamic simulation with the implementation of advanced techniques of sensitivity and dynamic optimization models those are applied on the concept of stocks and flows. This methodology is used in order to analyze and improve business strategies by generating policies which help to improve cash flow of the company. To validate our model, a case study illustrating the improvement of different metrics of the supply chain is considered here. The results show that the companies have to invest in technology in order to generated strategic decision to enhance their financial metrics.

Implementation of Lean Six Sigma framework with environmental considerations in an Indian automotive component manufacturing firm: a case study

Lean Six Sigma is a systematic data driven methodology that integrates two powerful business improvement strategies Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma with the goal of removing wastes and reducing process variation. Lean Six Sigma has a positive effect on environmental performance as defect reduction and reducing process variation leads to reduction in raw material consumption, energy consumption and reduced scrap which in turn reduces the overall environmental impacts. In this context, this study uses a Lean Six Sigma framework with environmental considerations to reduce overall defects and environmental impacts concurrently to improve the firm’s operational and environmental performance. The framework is based on Define Measure Analyze Improve Control methodology where traditional Lean Six Sigma and environmental impact assessment tools are integrated to systematically deploy LSS strategies with environmental considerations. The framework is validated with an industrial case study conducted in an Indian automotive component manufacturing organisation and the inferences are derived. On successful deployment of the framework, the internal defects was brought down to 6000 ppm from 16,000 ppm and environmental impacts was reduced to 33 Pt from 42 Pt. Deployment of the developed framework helped in improving the firm’s sigma level and also reduced the overall environmental impacts.

Supporting start-up business model design through system dynamics modelling

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how system dynamics (SD) modelling can provide a methodological support to business model (BM) design with the intent to better communicate business strategy and manage performance.Design/methodology/approachAfter a literature review of the field and an analysis of the strengths and limitations of conventional BM frameworks, the paper illustrates and discusses an approach that combines such a framework with SD modelling. A single-case study design was selected to explore the implications and limitations of using this combined approach to business modelling.FindingsThe methodological support provided by SD to BM design may effectively improve business strategy communication and performance management through both the adoption of a systemic and flexible perspective able to identify and analyse the main cause-and-effect relationships between the key-elements of the business strategy, and the use of a simulation technique that contributes in understanding how a firm operates, and its prospective performance over time.Originality/valueGrowing interest for BMs appears in the recent strategic management literature with research highlighting strengths and shortcomings. However, few attempts have been produced to overcome such limitations, while the adoption of SD is relatively new in supporting BM design.

An analysis of managerial factors affecting the implementation and use of overall equipment effectiveness

To ensure manufacturing organisations remain competitive, most of them are turning to total productive maintenance (TPM) and lean manufacturing to ensure seamless operations. Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is the foundation of these two business improvement strategies as it tackles the underlying losses that impede equipment efficiency. This study presents the prevalence of managerial issues related to the implementation and use of OEE in the manufacturing industry. To do this, five hypotheses and four research questions were formulated and tested using a combination of descriptive statistics and cross-tabulation, chi-square, analysis of variance, Tukey’s pairwise comparison, Z-test and correlation tests. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire responded by 139 manufacturing organisations worldwide. The results establish, among other ‘soft’ aspects, the linkage of the OEE implementation with that of TPM and lean manufacturing, and the drivers, most critical factors, barriers and the role of management in its implementation. The study also identifies how manufacturing organisations employ the information provided by OEE and how the data for its computation are collected. This study supports the very limited empirical research on the implementation and use of OEE. Thus, this research provides organisations, and their managers, with a better understanding of different factors that affect the successful deployment and management of this highly used measure in industry.

Determination of the effectiveness of the realization of enterprise business objectives and improvement strategies in an uncertain environment

AbstractThis study determines the effectiveness of business objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) of the identified business objectives for different types of enterprise. The evaluations of the relative importance of KPIs are called a fuzzy group‐decision‐making problem. The KPI weights are determined using the fuzzy analytic hierarchical process. The effectiveness of business objectives and KPIs is determined using the adopted Balanced Scorecard Designer Pro. Determination of the KPI rank with respect to each enterprise type is on the basis of Pareto analysis. The priority of management initiatives of the improvement strategy corresponds to the calculated rank, and it has a critical effect on the competitive advantage of any enterprise. The results discuss manufacturing, public and service enterprises, which exist in central Serbia. The proposed approach can also be adapted to different businesses.

Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Analytics approaches towards Efficient Predictions for Business Intelligence

Intelligence techniques no longer just evolve around traditional databases and warehouses, but have leaped into the era of big data. The aim is now to extract as much hidden knowledge from this rich data. The data is highly varying and evolves from various sources. Business improvement strategies usually revolved just around board room discussions; however these discussions are now more often aided with mining strategies. Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence techniques are of great advantage in predicting efficient strategies and business patterns. Apart from this, cognitive analytics and natural language processing are such techniques which could drastically change how business intelligence has been perceived. They try to emulate the human mind and train the computer to think accordingly. In this paper, we highlight the above listed methods in detail.

Promoting SME cooperative aggregations: main criteria and contractual models

Collaboration is considered an effective solution to improve business strategies. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often lack common principles and common forms of contractual coordination. Several policies implemented by the EU have addressed the set-up of a comprehensive SME policy framework, but European institutions seem to have focused more on organisational devices to conduct business activities rather than on contractual forms of coordination. In April 2009, Italy adopted a law in network contract to promote the development of inter-firm cooperation strategies to foster enterprises’ innovation and growth. Even if this law represents a novelty in Europe and may offer new challenges and hints, it still presents some lacks in its formulation. The current research aims at presenting the Italian law for network contract and a comparison with other models of SME aggregations adopted in EU countries. A formal model to support the design of an SME network was proposed, by providing both an ontology-based model to help the definition of the contract in a structured way, and a basic workflow to identify the important phases of the network design, i.e. the feasibility study and the negotiation.

Assessment of the current status of adoption of Six Sigma by auto components sector - Literature Review

Six Sigma is a business improvement strategy that focuses on improving products, processes and bottom line of businesses. The ultimate goal of Six Sigma is flawless performance leading to remarkable and tangible quality improvements when implemented judiciously. An attempt has been made to review all the available literature about the current researches and empirical studies regarding the adoption of Six Sigma by companies and findings of most of the implementation efforts are presented in this article.

Identifying the characteristics for achieving sustainable manufacturing companies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the qualitative characteristics that can make manufacturing small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) more robust and hence become economically sustainable in this globally competitive environment. The characteristics identified will form the foundations for defining a new manufacturing management perspective to both academics and industrialists.Design/methodology/approachThrough a comprehensive case study approach the authors initially analyse the developmental cycle of the subject company and then identify the key characteristics which enabled the company to become economically sustainable and survive in the changing environment in which it operates. The paper opens with a brief academic analysis of sustainability literature available, before developing the case study.FindingsTraditional business improvement strategies, such as Lean and Agility, which many companies initially follow in an attempt to become more robust and economically stable, allow companies to deliver bottom‐line savings in production terms although their effectiveness depends upon the volume and demand profile of their products. Through the case study outlined in this paper however, a combined approach towards the application of Lean is outlined as a primary means of reducing operating costs alongside the simultaneous implementation of product innovation strategies which allows the company to break into new markets as a means to achieving long‐term economic sustainability and making it more robust to market changes. The development of a business within a business is described as an effective mechanism towards achieving business sustainability.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper proposes a novel approach to achieving economic sustainability within a business and can be of benefit to the wider industrial and academic community. The development of work around a single company has its obvious limitations and it is crucial that further work, with a range of companies in the area of business sustainability, is key to developing a comprehensive set of sustainability characteristics.Practical implicationsThe paper proposes a set of qualitative characteristics for the development of an economically sustainable manufacturing company. The development of a comprehensive case study with a subject company also directs and enables other companies of similar size and style to apply a similar approach and to achieve economic sustainability in an efficient and effective manner, through reducing production costs, minimising company failure and increasing business efficiency and effectiveness.Originality/valueThe development of a set of sustainability characteristics aimed at tackling directly the issues of economic sustainability is proposed and is considered by the authors as one of a kind. The case study approach also provides for a framework towards the implementation of sustainable manufacturing operations within SMEs.

Investigating “The Way” for Toyota suppliers

PurposeToyota's management system, more formally known as the Toyota production system (TPS) is one of the most benchmarked business improvement strategies in modern industry. While many companies try to emulate Toyota's success using a variety of different approaches, most practitioners are not aware how Toyota replicates TPS at suppliers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the in‐house capabilities that are transferred from Toyota to suppliers as a way to more deeply understand how TPS can evolve.Design/methodology/approachThis work studies Toyota's supplier development practices by evaluating organizational documents using latent semantic analysis (LSA). LSA is a theory and method for extracting and representing the contextual‐usage and meaning of words and phrases by statistical computation applied to text. LSA is based on singular value decomposition (SVD), which is a mathematical matrix decomposition technique using factor analysis.FindingsThis work shows that Toyota targets processes, rather than whole systems, in assisting suppliers to be more effective at abnormality management. Findings also show that Toyota's approval process doesn't necessarily support major kaizen at suppliers yet does encourage minor day‐to‐day kaizen. Finally, this work reports that the Toyota Way for suppliers does not have to be adopted by suppliers, but does represent “A Way” to interact with suppliers to drive both culture and productivity simultaneously.Originality/valueThe paper uses a new method for analyzing Toyota's supplier development practices by mathematically representing and analyzing Toyota's organizational documents. This new method allows various components and features of Toyota's supplier development process to be represented and described in a way that offers many unique insights.

아이사랑카드제도에 대한 어린이집 원장 및 부모의 인식과 개선방안

The purpose of this study was to firstly, analyze how childcare center directors and parents experienced the `I-Sarang Card Business` and secondly, to evaluate the effects of the business, and thus to suggest the ways to improve business strategies. The subjects consisted of 104 childcare center directors and 304 parents using the `i-sarang card` in Gyeonggi province. The surveys were administered to the subjects, and the data were analyzed by means of the SPSS 12.0 program. The major results of this study were as follows : After the introduction of the `I-Sarang Card Business`, parents found the payment of childcare fee to be more convenient than previously and evaluated the effects of `I-Sarang Card Business` to be more positive than the childcare center directors. On the other hand, childcare center directors had difficulties in taking care of `I-Sarang Card Business` related administration and their evaluations were therefore more negative. Based on these results, several ways to improve the business were suggested.

Management branding (MB)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to improve business strategies approach by performance improvement through contextual managerial behavior development.Design/methodology/approach – Management branding is the result of deep analysis and observations made in many multinational companies, especially in the automotive industry. Management branding is the answer to pressing questions such as: ”What is wrong with our implementation of lean principles?”. The paper uses various methods of scientific research (definition and checking of assumptions, field research, laboratory research, questionnaires and interviews).Findings – Often, the partial failure of key performance indicators is derived from managers' behavior. Often, managers are frustrated at the end of the assessment period because of the total or partial failure of key performance indicators. Often managers seek solutions that are too old; they were valid in the past but are inappropriate for current decision challenges. Too often managers rely on...

An Optimized Player Taxonomy Model for Mobile MMORPGs with Millions of Users

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have great potential as sites for research within the social and human-computer interaction. In the MMORPGs, a stability player taxonomy model is very important for game design. It helps to balance different types of players and improve business strategy of the game. The players in mobile MMORPGs are also connected with social networks; many studies only use the player's own attributes statistics or questionnaire survey method to predict player taxonomy, so lots of social network relations' information will be lost. In this paper, by analyzing the impacts of player's social network, commercial operating data from mobile MMORPGs is used to establish our player taxonomy model (SN model). From the model results, social network-related information in mobile MMORPGs will be considered as important factors to pose this optimized player taxonomy model. As experimental results showed, compared with another player taxonomy model (RA model), our proposed player taxonomy model can achieve good results: classification is more stable.

Impact of Six Sigma in a developing economy: analysis on benefits drawn by Indian industries

Overall operational excellence is the key requirement of any business to have global competence and sustained growth. Indian industries are not the exception to this. Six Sigma has emerged as one of the most effective business improvement strategies world wide. Nothing much has been published so far illustrating an overall experience of Indian industries with Six Sigma. This paper presents an analysis of the impact of Six Sigma on developing economy like India. The paper provides an insight into what kind of benefits Indian industries are gaining from Six Sigma as a whole. The study further highlights similarity and differences of benefit gained by different scales and sectors of Indian industries through Six Sigma. This exhaustive analysis of the benefits drawn by Indian industries through Six Sigma can assist other industries in India as well as those in other developing countries, who have yet not experimented with Six Sigma, to become more focused regarding their expectations from this improvement drive.

Impact of Six Sigma in a developing economy: analysis on benefits drawn by Indian industries

Overall operational excellence is the key requirement of any business to have global competence and sustained growth. Indian industries are not the exception to this. Six Sigma has emerged as one of the most effective business improvement strategies world wide. Nothing much has been published so far illustrating an overall experience of Indian industries with Six Sigma. This paper presents an analysis of the impact of Six Sigma on developing economy like India. The paper provides an insight into what kind of benefits Indian industries are gaining from Six Sigma as a whole. The study further highlights similarity and differences of benefit gained by different scales and sectors of Indian industries through Six Sigma. This exhaustive analysis of the benefits drawn by Indian industries through Six Sigma can assist other industries in India as well as those in other developing countries, who have yet not experimented with Six Sigma, to become more focused regarding their expectations from this improvement drive.

Business Environment Evaluation and Improvement Strategy by Doing Business - Focused on Jeju Special Self-governing Province -

Business Environment Evaluation and Improvement Strategy by Doing Business - Focused on Jeju Special Self-governing Province -

Business improvement strategy or useful tool? Analysis of the application of the 5S concept in Japan, the UK and the US

Business improvement strategy or useful tool? Analysis of the application of the 5S concept in Japan, the UK and the US

Business improvement strategy or useful tool? Analysis of the application of the 5S concept in Japan, the UK and the US

This research investigates how a Japanese philosophy for life, the 5S concept, has been applied to achieve business improvement in Japan, the UK and the US. An exploratory study into an under-researched area, the research utilises frameworks provided by Osada (1989, 1991) and Hirano (1995, 1996). A quantitative content analysis approach of the websites of 217 businesses is used. Lexical analysis of the manifest content of World Wide Web business domains facilitates understanding of the ways in which 5S has been adopted and implemented. The research finds that Japan emphasises 5S as a strategy for business excellence, requiring participation both at work and in the home. In the UK and US, 5S is viewed as a system or tool for the workplace only. The findings suggest that a balanced understanding of both ‘5S as a philosophy or way’ and ‘5S as a technique or tool’ could define the ultimate goal of 5S as a management approach to solve problems in the workplaces and processes of organisations.