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Comparing the quality management practices in UK SMEs Maneesh Kumar Strathclyde Institute for Operations Management, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, and

Jiju Antony

Quality management practices 1153 Received 5 May 2008 Revised 23 June 2008 Accepted 17 July 2008

Centre for Research in Six Sigma and Process Excellence (CRISSPE), Strathclyde Institute for Operations Management, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

Abstract Purpose – The last two decades have witnessed an explosion of research into the area of quality initiatives (QI) such as ISO, total quality management, lean, Kaizen and its application within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, very few empirical studies have reported the application of Six Sigma in SMEs; the reasons may be attributed to several myths associated with Six Sigma. The purpose of this paper is to assess the current status of QI in the UK manufacturing SMEs and report the differences in the quality management practices of Six Sigma SMEs against the ISO certified firms. Design/methodology/approach – A survey-based approach was adopted to understand the established quality management practices in the UK SMEs. A short survey instrument was designed by reviewing the literature on quality improvement initiatives in SMEs. A sample of 500 manufacturing SMEs across UK was selected through stratified random sampling technique. Findings – A response rate of 12.7 per cent was achieved and included respondents at senior management and middle management level across the manufacturing industry in the UK. Data analysis on the history of quality initiatives (QI) in SMEs indicated towards the trend that ISO may be the foundation or building block before embarking on lean or Six Sigma. Differences in quality management practices such as customer focused measures and method of knowledge transfer to employees, were observed in Six Sigma and ISO certified SMEs. The main reasons cited for not implementing Six Sigma in SMEs were lack of knowledge or understanding of the system and limited resources. A significant difference in the performance of Six Sigma/lean firms against ISO certified companies were observed with respect to the strategic and operational measures of organizational performance. Research limitations/implications – The limited response rate from the survey in the UK manufacturing SMEs will affect the generalizability of study to entire SME population. To negate the limitations of this study, a multiple multi-level case studies will be conducted in SMEs in the next phase of doctoral research. Future study should focus on performing a global survey on quality management practices in SMEs. Originality/value – The novelty of the paper lies in conducting a comparative study on the quality management practices in Six Sigma and non-Six Sigma UK SMEs and measuring its impact on the performance of the firm. This study will facilitate in demystifying the myth that Six Sigma is only applicable in large organizations. Keywords Small to medium-sized enterprises, Six Sigma, International standards, Surveys, Critical success factors, Performance management Paper type Research paper

Industrial Management & Data Systems Vol. 108 No. 9, 2008 pp. 1153-1166 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0263-5577 DOI 10.1108/02635570810914865

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1. Introduction This research is a part of doctoral work to investigate into the application of Six Sigma within the UK manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Six Sigma is a well-established approach that seeks to identify and eliminate defects, mistakes or failures in business processes or systems by focusing on those process performance characteristics that are of critical importance to customers (Snee, 2004). This approach to reducing defects has made substantial impact on many large organisations, resulting in enhancement of performance and a vast improvement in business profits, employee morale, quality of products and customer loyalty (Snee, 2004; Antony et al., 2005; Kumar et al., 2006). In spite of a number of Six Sigma success stories in large organisations, many SMEs are yet to be convinced of the benefits from the introduction, development, implementation and deployment of Six Sigma (Kumar, 2007). Continuous improvement (CI) programs like Six Sigma do not appear to be easily understood or interpreted by SMEs, which may be a significant contributor to its low implementation. More holistic quality management initiatives, such as total quality management (TQM), also appear to exhibit low implementation rates (Ghobadian and Gallear, 1996; Van der Weile and Brown, 1998). It is suspected that the poor adoption of quality management initiatives in SMEs is due to multiple and complex reasons, not just the often stated impediments of cost, time and relative impacts (Gome, 1996). There is also evidence to suggest that quality management programs are not being taken up by SMEs for several reasons, as cited in literature (Husband, 1997; Husband and Mandal, 1999; Yusof and Aspinwall, 1999; Thomas and Webb, 2003; Antony et al., 2008) viz: . Difficult to distinguish between different quality programmes like Six Sigma, TQM, ISO, EFQM and the system that suits best to their needs. SMEs are unclear about the advantages (due to lack of knowledge) that one system has over other. . SMEs believe that their existing culture and system, such as ISO 9000 is sufficient to meet their business needs. . There is very little evidence of success of Six Sigma in SMEs context. SMEs believe that this program is another fad, fantasy or flavour of the month like TQM and BPR. . SMEs have a misconception that Six Sigma involves lots of statistics, which is beyond their domain. The rational for selecting SMEs as a subject matter of investigation is two-fold. First, SMEs constitute the bulk of enterprise with the major contribution to private sector output and employment in all economies of the world (Lin Yeb-Yun, 1999; Antony et al., 2005; Kumar, 2007). Secondly, due to growing importance of supply chain issues and pressure from original equipment manufacturers to improve the quality of product or service have forced SMEs to embark on initiatives like Six Sigma (Antony et al., 2005, 2008). SMEs view quality system such as ISO 9000 as the destination of the achievement of quality. In fact, quality improvement is always meant to be a journey rather than a destination. It is imperative for SMEs to understand the application of process improvement strategies from their larger counterparts and continuously strive for process excellence by implementing initiatives like lean and Six Sigma. CI initiatives like Six Sigma can be applied where there is a problem, irrespective of type or size of business (Brue, 2006). Six Sigma can act as a catalyst for changing SMEs in the quest for business

excellence by mobilising their intellectual capital, provided there is total commitment. A recent study has revealed that strong leadership and undying commitment from top-level management are critical to the success of Six Sigma in SMEs (Kumar and Antony, 2008). This study clearly indicates that there are significant differences in the performance of Six Sigma against non-Six Sigma SMEs.The purpose of this research is to identify SMEs that are implementing Six Sigma (also includes companies implementing lean) and perform a comparative analysis with ISO-certified organizations (also includes SMEs implementing TQM, Kaizen, and having certification such as investors in people (IIP)) with respect to the quality management practices existing within SMEs. Criteria used to capture the information on quality practices are: voice of customer; training; company’s strategic objective; critical success factors (CSFs) of implementation; performance measures used; and barriers to implementation. The study aims to identify differences in quality management practices and organizational performance, if it exists, between Six Sigma and ISO certified organizations. The research also demystifies the myth that Six Sigma is applicable only in large organizations. 2. Research design The objective of the study is to assess the status of Six Sigma implementation in the UK SMEs and compare the quality management practices within Six Sigma and ISO certified firms. Given the nature of research, a survey-based seemed appropriate. Surveys have been used in gathering data and information for a long time. Kerlinger (1986) suggests that survey research is typified by the collection of data from a population, or some sample drawn from it, to assess the relative incidence, distribution and interrelationships of naturally occurring phenomena. Survey research is the method of gathering data from respondents thought to be representative of some population, using an instrument composed of closed structure or open-ended items (Easterby-Smith et al., 2003; Saunders et al., 2003; Fowler, 2002). Survey has been an important data collection method for researchers in quality management area to statistically validate their hypothesis or research questions. A survey-based approach is used in this research to identify and understand the CI initiatives widely practised in SMEs. A survey instrument was designed with the purpose of identifying Six Sigma and non-Six Sigma companies within the UK and understands their business practices. The survey questionnaire was developed based on questionnaire used in the published literature of leading Six Sigma practitioners and academics (Antony and Banuelas, 2002; Ghobadian and Gallear, 1996; Lee and Oakes, 1995; Snee, 2004; Wessel and Burcher, 2004; Yusof and Aspinwall, 1999; Antony et al., 2005, 2008; Kumar, 2007) and by means of a brainstorming session with a number of quality professionals within the UK, who are familiar with the Six Sigma and other quality management philosophies like TQM. Primary data collection method used to achieve the research objectives was postal questionnaires with the self-addressed return envelop targeted to managing directors, operations director, quality manager, and production engineers within the sample. The database of 500 manufacturing SMEs was generated based on the random sampling of populated database existing within FAME and D&B. After sending three reminders to sample companies, 75 questionnaires were returned with only 64 completed and valid responses. This resulted in the response rate of 12.8 per cent. Among the 64 responding SMEs, 49 firms (76.56 per cent) are local, 14 (21.88 per cent) firms are part of MNC and one being a joint venture company. Geographically, majority

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of the SMEs are located UK wide (43 or 67.1 per cent). Some of these companies are also part of MNC, operating at different locations within UK and having diversified businesses such as automotive, aerospace, telecommunication, etc. to name a few. The distribution of 64 manufacturing firms is presented in Table I. It can be gauged from the table that the sample is representative of different kind of manufacturing companies ranging from aerospace, automotive, electronics and semiconductors to food, paper and plastic manufacturing industry. 3. Findings from the survey 3.1 History of QI in SMEs The respondents were asked to list the QI implemented in the past or currently deploying it across the business functions. As depicted in Table II, majority of the SMEs had ISO certification in place followed by implementation of lean, IIP and six sigma. From the analysis, it was found that 12.5 per cent of the responding companies do not have any kind of quality improvement methodology or system in place (seven of these firms belong to small-size category and one to medium-sized category). Further analysis of data on the existence of quality department in small and medium-sized firms revealed that 13 participating companies do not have any quality department in

Industry specialization

Table I. Industry specialization of sample firms

Automotive Textiles Chemical Aerospace Electrical Pharmaceuticals Printing/paper Mechanical Food Electronics and semiconductor Others

Quality initiatives undertaken

Table II. History of quality initiatives in SMEs

Count

Six Sigma TQM Lean Kaizen BPR Theory of constraints ISO 9000 Investors in people (IIP) European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Others No initiatives undertaken

2 2 2 3 3 3 5 6 7 7 24

Count

Percentage

10 5 17 7 1 1 49 10 0 9 8

15.6 7.8 26.5 10.9 1.6 1.6 76.6 15.9 0 14.3 12.5

place, as shown in Figure 1. Seven out of 16 small firm and 6 out of 48 medium-sized firms either do not have the quality department in place or quality was the responsibility of production department. This result is in consensus with findings from the literature (Ghobadian and Gallear, 1996; Yusof and Aspinwall, 2000; Thomas and Webb, 2003; Antony et al., 2005) that employees within SME environment are multi-tasking and capable enough to carry two to three responsibilities at the same time. This may be on the reasons that a production engineer or the operations manager may also be delegated the responsibility of quality department. However, it is interesting to observe that majority of the small firms as compared to the medium-sized firms are struggling to have a separate department for quality control due to scarcity of resources. As the firm grows into medium-size, the structure becomes more formal and delegation of responsibility is more visible in medium-sized companies. Small business owners even struggled in comparison to medium-sized firm to form team for problem solving for their critical business processes. The detailed information is presented in the Figure 2. More than 50 per cent of the SMEs conducted review meetings either once a week or only when the problem occurred in the business processes. Majority of the respondents in the other category were implementing British Retail Consortium (BRC) certification, especially within the food industry. No SMEs in the sample have implemented the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) assessment model, which further confirms the argument in the literature that EFQM is not suitable for SMEs. The model is bureaucratic and time consuming, making it

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No. of Employees 50-249 10-49

60

50

Count

40

42 65.62%

30

20

10

6 9.38% 7 10.94%

9 14.06%

0 No

Yes

Quality Department existence

Figure 1. Existence of quality departments in small and medium-sized firms

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No. of Employees 50-249 10-49

50

40

1158 30 Count

33 51.56%

20

15 23.44%

10 11 17.19%

Figure 2. Existence of problem solving teams in SMEs

5 7.81%

0 No

Yes

Team for problem solving

difficult for SMEs to allocate scarce resources for its implementation and follow-up. Majority of the sample firms that have embarked on the bandwagon of lean and Six Sigma had gone through the route of ISO certification in the past. Further in-depth analysis revealed that out of 49 certified ISO firms, 17 of the firms have implemented lean and 10 of the 17 lean firms have gone down the route of Six Sigma. This gives an indication that ISO may be the foundation or building block before embracing lean and Six Sigma. This is an area of further research. 3.2 Company strategic objectives The respondents were asked to shortlist three largest factors out of seven alternatives available, which define the company strategic objective(s). The alternatives available were profitability, flexibility, quality, market share, innovation, cost and other category. The results from the analysis are presented in Figure 3. The three most important factors cited by the sample firms that helped them in deciding their strategic objectives are profitability, quality, and cost. Market share and innovation is not considered as important by the senior management team to link with strategic business goals. It is imperative for the firms to be innovative in order to sustain the competition and their existence in the global market. However, the result reveals that innovation is rated in the second last position, which further confirms the fact that SMEs exist in the fire-fighting mode, struggling for their existence. Analysis of the strategic objectives revealed that profit, quality, and cost is considered as the top three objectives irrespective of the size of the firm or type of

57 30.32%

profit

50 26.60%

quality Company Strategic Objective

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32 17.02%

Cost

18 9.57%

flexibility

15 7.98%

market share

12 6.38%

Innovation

4 2.13%

other

0

10

20

30 Frequency

40

50

60

QI implemented. Top three strategic objectives, as depicted in the figure, for the ISO certified firms exactly matches with firms implementing lean/Six Sigma. 3.3 Customer focused measures in the firm The respondents were asked to state criteria used to capture and measure the voice of the customers. Respondents were given the option of multiple answers in order to capture all the measures existing within SMEs to understand the customer issues and problems. Majority of the firms (89.1 per cent) used customer complaints as a medium to understand the critical business issues followed by criteria such as delivery time (60.9 per cent) and customer survey (59.4 per cent). A comparative analysis of Six Sigma/lean SMEs against ISO certified firms are performed across the listed factors, as presented in the Table III. Similar results are reported for Six Sigma and ISO certified firms with respect to capturing voice of customers. Percentage of Six Sigma firms using delivery time as a measure differ significantly from ISO certified firms (82.6 per cent for Six Sigma firms against 48.8 per cent for ISO firms). The respondents were also asked to cite the three most important criteria that helped the firm to win customer loyalty. This question was designed to gauge the importance that the company gives to its customers and try to win their loyalty. The criteria used to win orders were divided into seven categories and the results from the analysis shows that manufacturing quality, product reliability, and on-time delivery of the final product are the three most important criteria that SMEs focuses on to win customer orders. Criteria used to win customer loyalty were also tested against

Figure 3. Factors defining the strategic objective(s) of the firm

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Table III. Measures used to capture voice of customers and win customers loyalty

Factors for comparison

Percentage usage of measures Six Sigma/lean SMEs ISO certified SMEsa

Measures to capture voice of customer Surveys 69.9 Delivery time 82.6 Customer complaints 91.3 Sales data 43.5 Repeat business 43.5 Others 34.8 Criteria that helped company to win customer loyalty Manufacturing quality 90.9 Product reliability 68.2 Delivery lead time 27.3 On-time delivery 72.7 Wide product range 13.6 Price 18.2 Others 13.6

All sample SMEs

53.7 48.8 87.8 43.9 48.8 17.1

89.1 60.9 59.4 46.9 43.8 23.4

80.5 68.3 31.7 43.9 26.8 41.5 4.9

84.1 68.3 30.2 54.0 22.2 33.3 7.9

Note: aNot including SMEs that are implementing lean/Six Sigma after ISO certification

the size of the firm (small and medium sized firms) that identified manufacturing quality, product reliability, and on-time delivery as the three most important factors irrespective of the size of the firm. The criterion of on-time delivery was also considered as important measure to capture the voice of customers. Similar findings were reported for Six Sigma/lean firms and ISO certified SMEs, as depicted in Table III. 3.4 Methods of knowledge transfer to employees The detail of approaches existing within SMEs for training and knowledge transfer (KT) to their staff is presented in Table IV. Majority of the SMEs provides in-house training to their employees as compared to seeking external help of consultants. They also resided on internet, books/research articles, and self-education as a medium to train themselves or their shop-floor employees. A further analysis revealed that Six Sigma SMEs prefer to take external consultants help or attend conferences and workshops for enhancing their knowledge as compared

Factors for comparison

Table IV. Methods of knowledge transfer to employees

Percentage usage of measures Six Sigma/lean SMEs ISO certified SMEsa

Mechanism for knowledge sharing and transfer In-house training 95.7 Conferences 26.1 External consultants 43.5 Internet 13.0 Self-education 17.4 Book/research articles 13.0 Other methods 4.3

All sample SMEs

92.7 12.2 24.4 14.6 19.5 7.3 12.2

Note: aNot including SMEs that are implementing lean/Six Sigma after ISO certification

93.8 17.2 31.3 14.1 18.8 9.4

to employees in ISO certified firms. However, the main source of knowledge sharing and transfer in Six Sigma and ISO certified firms is through in-house training of employees. 3.5 Reasons for not implementing Six Sigma in SMEs It is important to understand the perception of Six Sigma and factors hindering its implementation from the SMEs perspective. Firms were asked to state the reasons for not implementing Six Sigma as an initiative to drive CI effort within their firms. As depicted in the Table V, majority of the firms were discouraged to implement Six Sigma due to lack of knowledge of the system to kick off the initiative. This was followed by other reasons such as lack of resources, not sure if relevant, never heard, and cost issues. In the SMEs literature, the most common reason cited for not embarking on CI initiatives like TQM, lean or Six Sigma is the availability of resources, commitment from the top management to invest in the required resources for successful implementation, and considering ISO certification as a destination to CI efforts. This study further enriches the literature by providing in-depth information on the reasons for not implementing six sigma.

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3.6 CSFs to implementation The concept of identifying and applying CSFs to business problems is not a revolutionary new field of work (Caralli, 2004). It dates back to the original concept of success factors, as a basis for determining the information needs of managers, proposed by Daniel (1961) and popularized by Rockart (1979). CSFs are those factors which are critical to the success of any organisation, in the sense that, if objectives associated with the factors are not achieved, the organisation will fail – perhaps catastrophically so (Rockart, 1979). The respondents were asked to rate the importance of CSFs within the company, with 1 corresponding to “not important at all” and 5 as “very important”. In order to find the gap between the importance of CSFs and its actual practice in company, similar rating scale (1 represents “very poor practice” and 5 corresponds to “very good practice”) was used to measure the extent of implementation of CSFs within the firms. Comparison of CSFs between Six Sigma/lean companies against ISO certified companies, details provided in Table VI, revealed that there is no significant difference in terms of importance of the CSFs in Six Sigma and ISO certified companies. SMEs implementing Reasons for not implementing Six Sigma

Count

Lack of knowledge of system to kick off Not sure if relevant Availability of resources Never heard Cost issue Other competing initiatives ISO is accepted and necessary Leadership desire Suitable for large company Bureaucratic

12 9 8 7 7 6 5 5 3 2

Table V. Reasons for not implementing Six Sigma in SMEs

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Table VI. Comparison of CSFs between Six Sigma/lean against ISO certified SMEs

Critical success factors

Six Sigma/lean company Na Importance

Nb

Mgmt involvement and commitment Communication Link QI to employee Cultural change Education and training Link QI to customer Project selection Link QI to business Link QI to supplier Project mgmt skill Org infrastructure Vision and plan IT and innovation

17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17

32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32

4.88 4.82 4.44 4.41 4.47 4.38 4.25 4.06 4.00 4.00 3.71 3.94 3.56

ISO certified company Importance 4.67 4.67 4.43 4.37 4.20 4.17 4.23 4.10 4.23 4.10 3.97 3.83 3.93

Notes: aThis sample includes companies implementing lean or Six Sigma only; bthis sample includes companies having ISO certification or IIP or TQM, or Kaizen

ISO perceives the importance of these CSFs in a similar way as lean and Six Sigma implementing SMEs. In order to find the gap between the importance of CSFs and its actual practice in company, similar rating scale (1 represents “very poor practice” and 5 corresponds to “very good practice”) was used to measure the extent of implementation of CSFs within the firms. On the contrary, in practice within the company, each of these variables was found to be less applicable with mean practice value less than four for all factors, as shown in Table VII. A t-test was performed to identify whether the mean value for importance and actual practice of CSFs are statistically different from each other. The result of the analysis shows that each factor is statistically significant in terms of application and

Critical success factors

Table VII. Gap analysis of CSFs of quality practices in SMEs

Importance

Practice

GAP

Sig.a

4.73 4.70 4.44 4.38 4.27 4.22 4.19 4.14 4.14 4.03 3.97 3.97 3.83

3.97 3.59 3.36 3.19 3.27 3.36 3.22 3.28 2.97 3.17 3.57 3.46 3.17

0.76 1.11 1.08 1.19 1.00 0.86 0.97 0.86 1.17 0.86 0.40 0.51 0.66

0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.003 0.003 0.002

Mgmt involvement and commitment Communication Link QI to employee Cultural change Education and training Link QI to customer Project selection Link QI to business Link QI to supplier Project mgmt skill Org infrastructure Vision and plan IT and innovation Note: aTest performed at 5 per cent sig. Level

perceived importance of CSFs within SMEs. It can be inferred from Table VII that even though the company has got the quality systems or initiatives in place, still there is a huge gap in the level of importance and practice of CSFs, which may result in the poor organisational performance of the company. From the Tables VI and VII, it was found that management involvement and commitment is considered the most important factor and vision and plan statement and IT and Innovation received the lowest mean value of importance in both Six Sigma and ISO certified firms.

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3.7 Impeding factors in implementation of QI in SMEs Companies were asked to identify the top five inhibiting factors that were felt to be barriers to quality initiative implementation (Table VIII). The results of the analysis show that about 71.2 per cent percent of the responding firms stated that lack of resources was one of the impeding factors to the successful introduction of a QI in the UK SME. Lack of resources covered a large number of aspects including financial resources, human resources, time, etc. This was followed by lack of knowledge, poor training/coaching, internal resistance, poor employee participation, etc. Lack of resources is the most common impeding factors, as cited in the SMEs literature on CI initiatives that deters the progress of any change management programme in SMEs. However, it was surprising that lack of top management commitment is not considered within top five impeding factors. This result is different from other researchers work on impeding factors such as Antony et al., 2005, 2008; Kumar, 2007. 3.8 Performance of Six Sigma and ISO certified SMEs: a comparison The respondents were asked to rate the benefits that QI had brought to their organisations since implementation using a Likert scale of 1-5, where 1 ¼ negative benefit, 3 ¼ some benefit and 5 ¼ crucial. The table shows the degree of improvement realised on 1-5 scale after the implementation of QI. Score across each of the performance indicator reflects the improvement made by the SME after implementing the QI. Table IX summarises the key benefits gained from the implementation of Six Sigma and is compared against the performance of ISO certified companies with respect to variables mentioned in Table IX. Testing the mean performance of Six Sigma/lean organization against ISO certified firm revealed the significant differences in performance of ISO certified SMEs as Barriers to implementation of QI Availability of resources Lack of knowledge Lack of training Internal resistance Poor employee participation Inadequate process control techniques Changing business focus Lack of top mgmt commitment Poor delegation of authority Poor supplier involvement Poor project selection

Count

Percentage

42 35 33 32 27 24 21 18 17 16 5

71.2 59.3 55.9 54.2 45.8 40.7 35.6 30.5 28.8 27.1 8.9

Table VIII. Barriers to implementation of quality improvement initiatives in SMEs

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compared to a firm implementing Six Sigma. Six Sigma firms are performing much better on the operational metrics like reduction in scrap rate, cycle time, delivery time and increase in productivity. Even in the strategic measures of organizational performance, i.e. reduction in cost, increased profitability and increase sales, Six Sigma and lean firm out classes ISO certified SMEs. 4. Conclusion It is a myth that Six Sigma works only in large companies. Six Sigma has evolved into a business strategy in many large organisations and its importance in SMEs is growing everyday, as depicted from the survey results. This is among very few studies that have identified the differences in performance and other quality management practices between Six Sigma and ISO certified firms. The novelty of the paper lies in conducting a comparative study on the quality practices of Six Sigma and ISO certified SMEs and drawing out value lesson for the academics, consultants, researchers and practitioners of CI initiatives like lean and six sigma. Majority of the small firms as compared to middle-sized firms struggled to have a quality department in place or form a team for problem solving. The reason may be attributed to its informal structure and resolving problem based on the individual gut feeling. SMEs implementing Six Sigma or having ISO certification resided on customers complaints as the primary method to capture voice of customers. However, Six Sigma SMEs seek the help of external consultants more often for training their employees as compared to ISO certified firms, where in-house training was the main source of knowledge transfer. The analysis of the survey findings revealed that factors critical to success of QI are equal in importance, irrespective of type of initiatives implemented by the firm. Any quality initiative should also be linked to employees in terms of training, making resources available and establishing good communication with them. The operational and strategic performance metrics of SMEs implementing Six Sigma differs significantly from ISO certified companies. This gives an indication that Six Sigma is beneficial for all type of firm, irrespective of the size of the firm. The focus of the study is only on the UK manufacturing SMEs and also excludes micro enterprises, limiting the generalizability of the findings to manufacturing sector only. Considering the low response rate in the first phase of doctoral research, it was decided to perform a multi-level multiple exploratory case studies within Six Sigma and

Performance measures

Table IX. Performance measures of Six Sigma against ISO certified SMEs

Reduction in scrap rate Reduction in cycle time Reduction in delivery time Increase in productivity Reduction of cost Increased profitability Increased sales Reduction of customer complaints Reduction of employee complaints

SS/lean org. Mean SD 3.52 3.38 3.24 3.79 3.50 3.40 3.50 3.65 3.27

0.829 0.875 0.872 0.726 0.777 0.770 0.900 0.950 1.072

ISO certified org. Mean SD 2.82 2.80 2.84 2.84 2.88 2.35 3.04 3.07 3.00

0.872 0.940 0.926 0.746 0.752 0.797 0.889 0.961 1.087

Sig. value 0.000 0.003 0.002 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.003 0.003 0.024

ISO certified organizations identified from the survey response. The findings and discussion of multiple case studies conducted is beyond the scope of this paper. The case-study research would enable to perform an in-depth cross case analysis and identify the significant differences existing in the quality management practices of Six Sigma and ISO certified SMEs. Future study should focus on performing a global survey on quality management practices in SMEs and understand the impact of culture on successful implementation of Six Sigma in SMEs. The global study will also facilitate in establishing the best-in-class practice of Six Sigma for the “little guy”, i.e. SMEs. References Antony, J. and Banuelas, R. (2002), “Key ingredients for the effective implementation of Six Sigma program”, Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 20-7. Antony, J., Kumar, M. and Labib, A. (2008), “Gearing Six Sigma into UK Manufacturing SMEs: an empirical assessment of critical success factors, impediments, and viewpoints of Six Sigma implementation in SMEs”, Journal of Operations Research Society, Vol. 59 No. 4, pp. 482-93. Antony, J., Kumar, M. and Madu, C.N. (2005), “Six Sigma in small and medium sized UK manufacturing enterprises: some empirical observations”, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 22 No. 8, pp. 860-74. Brue, G. (2006), Six Sigma for Small Business, CWL Publishing Enterprises, Inc., Madison, WI. Caralli, R.A. (2004), “The critical success factor method: establishing a foundation for enterprise security management”, Technical Report CMU/SEI-2004-TR-010, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA. Daniel, R.H. (1961), “Management data crisis”, Harvard Business Review, September-October, pp. 111-2. Easterby-Smith, M., Thorpe, R. and Lowe, A. (2003), Management Research – An Introduction, Sage, London. Fowler, F.J. (2002), Survey Research Methods, 3rd ed., Sage, London. Ghobadian, A. and Gallear, D.N. (1996), “Total quality management in SMEs”, Omega: International Journal of Management Science, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 83-106. Gome, A. (1996), “Total quality madness”, Business Review Weekly, Vol. 18, pp. 38-44. Husband, S.G. (1997), “Innovation in advanced professional practice: doctor of technology”, Report No. 2, Faculty of Science and Technology, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia. Husband, S.G. and Mandal, P. (1999), “A conceptual model for quality integrated management in small and medium size enterprises”, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 16 No. 7, pp. 699-713. Kerlinger, F.N. (1986), Survey Research: In Foundations of Behavioural Research in Education, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York, NY. Kumar, M. (2007), “Critical success factors and hurdles to Six Sigma implementation: the case of a UK manufacturing SME”, International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 333-51. Kumar, M. and Antony, J. (2008), “Comparing the quality management practices between six sigma and ISO certified SMEs – a survey based approach”, paper presented at 13th International Conference on Productivity and Quality Research, 25-27 June 2008, Oulu, Finland.

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