Causal Knowledge-Based Approach to Formulating Six Sigma Management Strategy: an Empirical Evaluation

Six Sigma Management has played a very important role in improving corporate performance. Literature shows that a great deal of components is influencing the success of Six Sigma Management. Problems with analyzing those components related to the Six Sigma Management lie in the fact that there exist complicated forms of causal relationships among them, forcing the Six Sigma strategists to rely on simple and intuitive interpretation of a few number of components. Therefore, it was inevitable that a bunch of valuable information is lost during the Six Sigma Management analysis. To overcome such pitfalls, this study proposed a Cognitive Map (CM) extracted from Six Sigma experts, and exploring a set of robust and effective Six Sigma strategies with the aid of CM simulations. Empirical results obtained from field survey data collected from a number of Samsung companies in South Korea proved the validity of our proposed approach.