Forecasting Management Philosophy Life Cycles: A Comparative Study of Six Sigma and TQM

Six Sigma has been implemented at many organizations, and has reportedly generated billions of dollars in cost savings. Despite claims that Six Sigma is not another management fad. its basic tenets and history thus far appear analogous to total quality management (TQM), which was labeled by many as a management fad. By looking at the number of articles published by year, the degree of similarity between the two management philosophies was measured using the Kolmogoror Goodness-of-Fit test. This study found significant similarity between the distributions of TQM and Six Sigma article counts, and gave impetus for the authors' use of analogy forecasting to offer an estimate of Six Sigma's remaining life cycle. The authors' results show that Six Sigma has about seven years left in its life cycle.

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