Six Sigma in the UK service organisations: results from a pilot survey

Abstract Six Sigma is now increasingly applied to a variety of processes ranging from manufacturing to service and variegated transactional processes. Six Sigma has been proved to be a rigorous pursuit of the reduction of process variation and defect rate in all critical business processes to achieve breakthrough improvements in process performance that generates significant savings to the bottom line of an organisation. The paper begins with a simple comparative study between manufacturing and service processes from the Six Sigma application perspective. The paper then presents the results of a pilot survey carried out in the UK service organisations to understand the status of Six Sigma. The paper finally reports the essential ingredients which are required for the successful deployment of Six Sigma in the service sector.