Six Sigma: a Key Driver for Process Improvement

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License unported 3.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that original work is properly cited. Abstract Six Sigma is a one of the most common used programs in production companies for reduce cost, improve productivity and provide a basis for goals improvement which leads to competitive advantage. Understanding the key Six Sigma factors (Total Quality Management, strong customer focus, data analysis tools, financial results and project management) allows organizations to better support their strategic directions focused on improving customer requirements through the improving of own business systems and operational performances. In this paper will be described a Six Sigma approach and presented results of the empiric research conducted in Croatian graphic companies. All findings of this empiric research will provide better understanding of Six Sigma benefits and graphic companies, but production companies will be able to guide business and production processes in right directions with minimizing inputs, maximizing outputs and satisfy owners, employees and customers.


Introduction
Process improvement is one of the most important tasks of the management in production companies.A contemporary business conditions in extremely turbulent environment with frequent technological changes require constantly adjusting of all activities with emphasis on a business and production process improvement which should be able to enable achieving a strategic goals.
Modern business practice recognizes many Process improvement techniques and Six Sigma program is one of the common used.
Six Sigma, a trademark of Motorola, was introduced 20 years ago has been characterized as the latest management fad to repackage old quality management principles, practices, tools and techniques (Clifford, 2001).Six Sigma has been identified as a Process improvement approach that dramatically improves performances, enhances process capability and produces bottom line results for organization (Dasgupta, 2003;Linderman et al., 2003;Pantano at al., 2006).Also Six Sigma is defined as a business process improvement approach that seeks to find and eliminate causes of defects and errors, reduce cycle times and cost of operations, improve productivity, Communications of the IBIMA 2 better meet customer expectations and achieve higher asset utilization and returns (Evans and Lindsay, 2005).The focus of Six Sigma is on the customer rather than the product (Douglas and Erwin, 2000).
The success of Six Sigma programs hinges on the sequence of many Six Sigma elements such as management involvement, improvement specialist, performance metrics, systematic procedure and project selection and prioritization.
Six Sigma helps and organization become more ambidextrous by providing a switching structure that allows the organization to act more organically in coming up with new improvement ideas and operate more mechanistically when implementing those (Daft, 2001).Furthermore, the structure of Six Sigma employs numerous mechanisms that simultaneously promote the conflicting demands of exploration and control in the improvement effort.As a result, what is new in Six Sigma when compared to prior quality management approaches is more its organizational implementation rather than the underlying philosophy or the quality tools/techniques employed (Schroeder et al., 2008).

Process improvement
Process improvement is a series of actions taken by a process owner to identify, analyze and improve existing processes within an organization to meet new goals and objectives.These actions often follow a specific methodology or strategy to create successful results.Process improvement results in costs associated with the purchase of new technology, modification of existing equipment, training employees, hiring new employees and investment in information technology infrastructure.Six Sigma is the process management tool that has yielded the greatest results and Six Sigma is ranked much higher than other Process improvement techniques (see Table 1) (Dushmare, 2006).processes by using improvement specialists, a structured method and performance metrics with the aim of achieving strategic objectives (Schroeder et al., 2008).This method is a project-driven management approach to improve the organization's products, services and process by continually reducing defects in the organization.It is a business strategy that focuses on improving customer requirements understanding, business systems, productivity and financial performance (Kwak and Anbari, 2006).
Six Sigma applies a structured approach to managing improvement activities, which is represented by Define -Measure -Analyze -Improve -Control (DMAIC) used in process improvement or Define -Measure -Analyse -Design -Verify (DMADV) used in product design improvement.Both of these procedures are developed in the classic Plan -Do -Check -Act (PDCA) cycle, but Six Sigma specifies the quality management tools and techniques to use within each step (Linderman et al., 2003).
Six Sigma initiatives generally include projects with a broad range of specific objectives, such as yield improvement, cycle-time reduction, inventory reduction, streamlining supplier relationship and improvement customer satisfaction (Shenhar et al., 1997).Six Sigma programs improve organizational procedures and routines.Six Sigma assumes that the current organizational processes are sound but they need minor improvement to be efficient (Hammer, 2002) where sigma is a term used to represent the variation about the process average (Antony and Banuelas, 2002).
• Business viewpoint: Six Sigma is defined as a business strategy used to improve business profitability, to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of all operations to meet or exceed customer's needs and expectations (Antony and Banuelas, 2002).
Corporate Process improvement from Six Sigma programs represents a significant opportunity in terms of the reported gains in profitability and customer satisfaction (Dusharme, 2001).The design of a Six Sigma program requires choices among many types of Champions, Black Belts, Master Black Belts or Green Belts practices (personnel involved in implementing Six Sigma in a company), such as different types of teams, reporting structures, employee selection and training, reward and recognition systems (Lucas, 2002).

Six Sigma strategies, tools, techniques and principles
Communications of the IBIMA 4 Six Sigma is a systematic data-driven approach using the DMAIC process through the rigorous application of statistical tools and techniques.Table 2 presents Six Sigma strategies, principles, tools and techniques (Antony et al., 2003).The success of Six Sigma programs hinges on the sequence of many Six sigma elements/activities or a model for implementation (Chakravorty, 2009).Six Sigma key success factors has been described by many authors, but in this paper accent will be on following 14 factors collected by Ho et al. (2008): • Top management's commitment and participation Modern printing and publishing is based on high technology, specially information and communication, and new way of production satisfies the following needs (Glykas, 2004): The printing and publishing production process is rapidly shifting from analogue to digital technology as the basis for workflows.The efficiency of the production process requires the digitalization of all steps and elimination of analogue methods and materials from the process flow apart from the starting and finishing phase.Across networks printing and publishing wants to be dial tone service simple, reliable, ubiquitous, fast and cheap (Glykas, 2004).Whole process is based on seven main phases: ordering, designing, electronic production, film production, printing, finishing and delivering.Therefore, Six Sigma program can be successfully implemented from the first phase of the process.

Communications of the IBIMA 6
For manufacturing companies the direct benefit of Six Sigma results from the reduction in the number of defects due to improved manufacturing processes (Kumar et al., 2008) But the implementation of Six Sigma programs has to take into consideration the level of technological intensity of the company to determine relative impact of program design factors and the application.

Aim and objectives of the research
The aim of this paper is describe and band function of Six Sigma program in production companies, with particular regard to graphic companies.Companies have to identify Six Sigma key success factors for Process improvement which could result with competitive advantage.The results of this research will provide to graphic companies better understanding of Six Sigma benefits and outcomes, insight into the Six Sigma strategies, principles, tools and techniques and Six Sigma key success factors as well.Based on these findings graphic companies, but production companies will be able to guide business and production processes in right directions with minimizing inputs, maximizing outputs and satisfied owners, employees and customers.

Data collection and research methodology
The empiric research has been conducted on defined sample of 120 Croatian graphic companies in a period from November 2009 to January 2010.In sample were involved only companies for which is already known to apply Six Sigma program.The questionnaires have been collected by e-mails.The companies in sample are graphic production companies involved in printing and publishing.A majority of the respondents belong to middle and upper management and have average 9 years of experience.The average period of application of Six Sigma program in companies in sample is 5.5 years.The examinee was able to choose one or more answers and answer using a 5-point Likert scale between the endpoints: "never use one" and "very frequently use", "not influential at all" and "very much influential", "strongly disagree" and "strongly agree".
The collection of data was completed in January 2010, followed by data processing.

Data analysis and results of empirical research
First step was to compute Cronbach's alpha which indicated a strong correlation of variables (see Table 3).Internal consistency of questions was found computing Cronbach's alpha which is done for variables in three data categories.This statistic provides an indication of the Communications of the IBIMA 7 average correlation among all of the items that make up the scale.Values range from 0 and 1, with higher values indicating greater reliability.Ideally, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient of scale should be above 0.7.Before exploration of used strategies and principles was computed Cronbach's alpha for variables (see Table 5.The means and standard deviations of the variables (Six Sigma key factors) are shown in Table 9.Companies have to identify Six Sigma key success factors for Process improvement which could result with competitive advantage.The results of this research will provide to graphic companies better understanding of Six Sigma benefits and outcomes, insight into the Six Sigma strategies, principles, tools and techniques and Six Sigma key success factors as well.Based on these findings graphic companies, but production companies will be able to guide business and production processes in right directions with minimizing inputs, maximizing outputs and satisfy owners, employees and customers.

Table 1 :
Rating of process improvement techniques

Table 2 :
Six Sigma strategies, principles, tools and techniques Structured methodology helps Six Sigma programs to identify the root causes of the problem, look for solution and improve the process.Key factors for implementing a successful Six Sigma program in manufacturing and services organizations regardingAntony  and Banuels (2002)are:• Management commitment and involvement• Understanding of Six Sigma methodology, tools and techniques• Linking Six Sigma to business strategy• Linking Six Sigma to customers • Project selection, reviews and tracking

Table 3 :
Reliability of survey variables

Table 4 :
Rating of process improvement tool in Croatian graphic companies

Table 5 :
Reliability of survey variables

Table 6 :
The most common used strategies and principles of Six Sigma in Croatian graphic companies

Table 7 :
Reliability of survey variables

Table 8 :
The most common used tools and techniques of Six Sigma in Croatian graphic companies

Table 9 :
Means and standard deviations of Six Sigma key factors Sigma strategies, principles, tools and techniques (frequency of use) and Six Sigma key success factors in correlation to The results of empiric research shows that Six Sigma program is the most common used process improvement tool in Croatian graphic companies, as it is in the world business practice.The most common used strategies and principles of Six Sigma in Croatian graphic companies are Data collection (53.09 %), Project management (51.58%) and Process control planning (48.15 %).The most common used tools and techniques of Six Sigma in Croatian graphic companies are Process mapping (56.79 %), Regression analysis (49.38 %) and Analysis of means and variances (48.15 %).Utilization of and Six Sigma tools with the most Process improvement factors.Companies in sample didn't recognize importance of Project execution and follow-up of the results, Incentive/reward system, Project meshes with company's business strategy and the Efficacy of teaching material in helping Green Belts students learn which could indicate immaturity of implemented Six Sigma programs with average age of 5.5 years.