Six Sigma literature: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Six Sigma is a business management strategy used by many industries for quality improvement. The aim of the study is to conduct a bibliometric and relational study on Six Sigma research indexed in two well-known databases: Scopus and the Web of Science. Data collection involved 798 articles published in 392 academic journals between 1990 and 2017. Studies were classified based on research type (methodology used), authorship (type and country of affiliation), research field and keywords (co-occurrence and trend). Results show that literature on Six Sigma is dominated by the field of business and management followed by engineering and medicine. United States is the leading country in this topic in terms of documents, cites and co-authorships. Case studies and conceptual papers are clearly the most used methodologies, although there is a noticeable upward trend in surveys in the business and management area. Based on the articles’ keywords, it appears that Lean Six Sigma, the combination of the two management approaches, has recently become one of the most common terms, outpacing traditional terms such as Total Quality Management or continuous improvement. For the field to advance, further survey studies are needed as conceptually it has been deeply researched.

Keywords:

• quality management
• Six Sigma
• literature review
• bibliometric

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.