An empirical study on the correlation between Critical DFSS success factors, DFSS implementation activity levels and business competitive advantages in Taiwan's high-tech manufacturers

Abstract

Quality management is an important topic in the 21st century. Design for Six-Sigma (DFSS) has become a compulsory path to sustained enterprise growth. Enterprises are more focused on their own DFSS activities to attain sustained enterprise operations. This research attempts to study the impact of critical DFSS success factors on DFSS activities implementation and the impact of DFSS activities implementation on business competitive advantages. We considered the intermediate variables of ‘industry group’ and ‘enterprise scale’, and developed a theoretical model of the impact relationship. The empirical analysis results on Taiwan's high-tech manufacturers show that the critical success factors for DFSS have a significant impact on DFSS activities implementation. Furthermore, DFSS activities implementation has an essential impact on the two competitiveness dimensions, including cost reduction and differentiation. The research hypothesis ‘the higher the level of DFSS activities implementation, the better the business competitive advantages’ will be supported with statistical significance. The two intermediate variables, industry group and enterprise scale do not show noticeable impacts on DFSS activities implementation and business competitive advantages.

Keywords:

• critical success factors
• Design for Six-Sigma (DFSS)
• competitive advantages