Business Process Management and Six Sigma: Leveraging the Synergistic Relationship

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors establish the existence of a synergistic relationship between two complementary methodologies, Business Process Management (BPM) and Six Sigma, through literature review and suggest methods to exploit the same. Six Sigma provides incremental improvement through its analytical abilities and is complemented by BPM which provides the data from the ongoing processes on a real time basis. The authors discuss two perspectives on how to synergize these methodologies. Firstly, achieve hybrid BPM-Six Sigma by substituting Improve and Manage steps of BPM with the DMAIC of Six Sigma methodology. Secondly, utilize Six Sigma methodology for analysis on data generated by BPM. The application of the integration of BPM and Six Sigma is presented through case studies from financial services companies. The authors also present the key features of BPM tools that can assist Six Sigma in every phase of its implementation.