Recently, the interest in being part of more competitive companies has increased. For this, organizations apply various strategies of continuous improvement that allow them to maintain high standards of competitiveness. In this sense, organizations make use of various techniques, tools, and methodologies that support the achievement of objectives. This research presents an approach towards the Six Sigma (SS) strategy, one of the main continuous improvement strategies used to achieve competitiveness. On the other hand, organizations currently seek that during manufacture of their products, caring for the environment is naturally part of their objectives, seeking to achieve benefits with a sustainable impact. Therefore, this research seeks to define the CSF for implementation of SS through a factor analysis that allows identifying the relationship between SS and obtaining sustainable benefits (SB) through its implementation.
TopIntroduction
There is enough evidence that shows that large organizations seek continuous improvement within their processes, products and services as well as remain in range of the most competitive companies in the field in which they develop. To achieve these objectives, the administrators of organizations always search to implement continuous improvement strategies that support them to stay within the most competitive. Among the continuous improvement strategies, there is Six Sigma (SS), in order to reduce defects in such a way that organizations become more competitive, reduce their costs and improve the quality of their processes, products and services.
In addition to this, organizations are currently seeking to be sustainable in two ways in internal manufacturing processes and in products they provide to their final customers, in order to reduce damage to the environment. That is, organizations seek to be competitive at the same time they achieve continuous improvement, plus responsible with care of environment, so their priority is no longer just focus on productivity, but being productive, having a good quality and being sustainable.
Considering that SS strategy is commonly used for continuous improvement in organizations, it is important to mention that the critical factors must be considered to achieve a successful implementation. In this sense, and for companies to achieve a correct deployment of the SS strategy, it is important that Critical Success Factors (CSF) are considered during the implementation process. That is why this research is focused on identification of CSF through a factorial solution, managing to identify which are the most substantial CSF for the achievement of operational objectives and achievement of competitiveness in organizations.
According to literature review and considering that with a successful implementation, sustainable benefits and care for the environment can be achieved, Alhuraish, Robledo, and Kobi (2017) mention that a competitive advantage is achieved when organizations develop linked practices with sustainable development strategies, and thereby control waste and the implementation of practices that are environmentally and socially responsible.
The relation between SS and sustainability, give the impression that SS can have a positive influence on sustainability (Chugani, Kumar, Garza-Reyes, Rocha-Lona and Upadhyay, 2017), this through application of tools that make up to SS, seeking to obtain benefits in caring for the environment.
Based on the above, a measurement instrument was developed in this research to identify the CSF that have been considered by the organizations that have implemented SS, likewise, through the same instrument, it seeks to verify the relationship between a correct implementation of SS and sustainability.
For development of the instrument it was necessary to perform an extensive literature review, identifying those articles that will show the results obtained with implementation of SS and those that will present sustainable results from its implementation.
As a result of the literature review, it was possible to develop a measurement instrument initially composed of 39 questions, which were distributed in five constructs, where four of them allow identifying the CSF and one the relationship with sustainability. In this way, the instrument has been developed with three main objectives, the identification of CSF, verifying the relation between SS and sustainability, and knowing to what extent sustainable benefits are achieved with a successful SS implementation.
Prior to application phase of the instrument, it is important to mention that it was subjected to the pertinent statistical validations recommended by existing literature; these validations have been presented in another book chapter.
In particular, this chapter presents the results of a factorial solution for determination of CSF in deployment of SS and its relationship with sustainability in the aerospace industry.