Abstract—Six Sigma quality improvement methodology has received considerable attention in many manufacturing and service industries. There have been some studies identifying critical success factors for Six Sigma implementation. Within the resource constraints, an immediate adoption of all critical success factors may not be allowed. In order to be able to consolidate resources in some of the most important factors, the prioritization of critical success factors need to be determined. This will enable Six Sigma practitioners and policy makers to understand the relative importance among the factors and develop improvement strategies for resource provision. This paper aims to present fuzzy extended analytic hierarchy process (fuzzy AHP) based methodology with the use of triangular fuzzy numbers for pairwise comparison scale to prioritize critical success factors for Six Sigma implementation. The weights of critical success factors are determined by nine experts including six managers, two Six Sigma Black-Belts and one Brown-Belt from three multinational companies in the electronics industry located in Thailand. This paper is the first attempt to prioritize the critical success factors of implementing Six Sigma methodology by using fuzzy AHP approach. Finally, this paper concludes with contributions and suggestions for future research.
Index Terms—Critical Success factors, fuzzy AHP, prioritization, six sigma
N. Somsuk and C. Simcharoen are with the Department of Industrial Engineering, Eastern Asia University, Pathumthani, 12110, Thailand (e-mail: nisakorn@eau.ac.th, jitlada@eau.ac.th).
Cite: N. Somsuk and C. Simcharoen, "A Fuzzy AHP Approach to Prioritization of Critical Success Factors for Six Sigma Implementation: Evidence from the Electronics Industry in Thailand," International Journal of Modeling and Optimization vol. 1, no. 5, pp. 432-437, 2011.
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