Gearing Six Sigma into UK manufacturing SMEs: results from a pilot study

Approaches to business improvement have evolved and grown since the early 1900s and today the process focused, statistically driven Six Sigma methodology has been widely used by companies such as GE, Motorola, Honeywell, Bombardier, ABB, Sony, DuPont, American Express, Ford and many other companies in improving the business performance and optimizing the bottom-line benefits, Although Six Sigma business management strategy has been exploited by many world class organizations as mentioned above, there is still less documented evidence of its implementation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper reports the key findings of a Six Sigma pilot survey in UK manufacturing SMEs.