Development of a six-sigma and TQM integration model for business excellence

Due to the importance of six-sigma in reducing the defects in products and processes and its rules in TQM as a useful management philosophy, it is apparent that both six-sigma and TQM should be utilised together in order to empower organisations to implement Six-Sigma and TQM in an integrated manner. The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated conceptual model between six-sigma and TQM to achieve business excellence for manufacturing organisations, the proposed model aims to unify the quality management system and simplify the implementation process to provide impetus and guidance for manufacturing organisations in order to attain better performance and sustainable improvement. Survey questionnaires used to collect practitioners and academic opinion aiming to validate the proposed model, its suitability for manufacture organisation and identifying barriers to successful implementation. The results demonstrated that the proposed model developed is a valuable to practitioners and academics and can help manufacturing organisations to achieve business excellence and attaining sustainable improvement if adopted and applied correctly.