Hizmet letmelerinde Alt Sigma Uygulamalar : Literatür Ara t rmas

The aims of the six sigma philosophy which doesn’t accept the idea of the defects are inevitable in the processes are toproduce defects free at he first time and to reach to the goal of 3,4 defects per million opportunities by minimizing the variationand meeting the customers’ expectations. Six sigma has been firstly applied in Motorolo in 1980s and then it has been widely usedby other manufacturing firms around the world. By six sigma applications, the manufacturing companies had many opportunitiesto increase product quality, productivity of the processes and to decrease costs. By the applications of six sigma in theorganizations, the customers’ satisfaction can be increased as well as the organization can gain many financial benefits. Accordingto Pyzdek (2003;5) the firms which are at 3 or 4 sigma level spend the 25-40 percentage of their revenue for fixing the problems.The firms which are at the six sigma level spend less than 5 percentage of their revenue for fixing the problems.By the 2000s’ the service firms also started to apply six sigma in their processes. Particularly, healthcare and financialcompanies had many successful six sigma applications. Six sigma can be applied in service firms successfully however servicefirms can meet with many difficulties related with the characteristics of the service firms. Depending on these difficulties theservice firms should evaluate the critical success factors of six sigma applications in service processes.In this paper, depending on the literature review the success factors for six sigma applications in service firms have beenevaluated according to the differences of the manufacturing firms and service firms in the application of six sigma and thedifficulties that the service firms meet while applying six sigma projects. Evaluating the success factors for six sigma applicationsin service firms is important for increasing the efficiency of six sigma applications in service firms.According to literature, many service firms operate at the 1,5-3 sigma level. So, six sigma methodology present manyopportunities for service firms to decrease their defects and to increase six sigma level. In the literature there are many successstories about the application of six sigma methodology. These examples are mainly from healthcare and financial sector. Inaddition, there are some six sigma application examples in the service departments of manufacturing firms such as humanresources department, in education and in the activities of municipality.Evaluating service quality is more difficult than evaluating the product qualit