It is claimed that the Six Sigma programme brings competitive advantages to companies that implement it. This paper studies the validity of this claim by positioning Six Sigma in the paradigms provided by the literature on competitive strategy. The main functionality of Six Sigma projects is to improve operational effectiveness and efficiency. A continual improvement of operational effectivenes...

Healthcare, as with any other service operation, requires systematic innovation efforts to remain competitive, cost efficient, and up-to-date. This article outlines a methodology and presents examples to illustrate how principles of Lean Thinking and Six Sigma can be combined to provide an effective framework for producing systematic innovation efforts in healthcare. Controlling healthcare cost...

The Six Sigma improvement methodology has received considerable attention recently, not only in the quality literature, but also within general business and management literature. For example, a recent book on Six Sigma (Harry and Shroeder, 2000) made the New York Times best-seller list. Today, Six Sigma is arguably the hottest contemporary topic in quality. After all, what company would not be...