Seniye Ümit Oktay Fırat

A Six Sigma DMAIC Process for Supplier Performance Evaluation using AHP and Kano's Model

The suppliers, which are one of the most important actors in the supply chain, have a significant effect on the performances of their customer firms. Hence, supplier performance evaluation has become a competitive tool in today’s goods and service producing industries. This paper presents a supplier performance evaluation process developed using the Six Sigma Define – Measure – Analyse – Improve – Control (DMAIC) methodology. The proposed process has been applied in a central services company, where the suppliers had never been evaluated before. To this end, first of all, the evaluation criteria have been defined through brainstorming and meetings within the company, then weighted with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and categorized according to Kano’s Model. Afterwards, suppliers have been scored and classified based on a proposed methodology using a modified version of Kano’s model, and thus, the proposed process has proven to be useful in real life industrial applications. KEywoRDS AHP, Kano’s Model, Six Sigma DMAIC, Supplier Performance Evaluation

Managerial processes: business process that sustain performance

Purpose – It is argued that whilst operational and support processes deliver performance presently, it is the managerial processes that sustain performance over time. The purpose of this research paper is to better understand what these managerial processes are and how they influence organisational performance.Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical background is reviewed covering literature on the subject of business process management, resourced‐based view (RBV), dynamic capabilities and managerial processes. A research framework leads to qualitative case study‐based research design. Data are collected from 37 organisations across Europe, classified according to their performance.Findings – Findings suggest that the five managerial processes and their constituent managerial activities, identified through the empirical research, influence performance of organisations as an interconnected managerial system rather than as individual processes and activities. Also, the execution and maturity of this m...

How to compare performances of firms operating in different sectors

This paper seeks to address the question ‘How to measure different SMEs’ performances comparatively?’ An initial review reveals that the literature does not provide objective and explicit debate on the subject. Consequently, an approach is developed, informed by the literature, which is used to compare the performances of 37 SMEs. The consistency and reliability of the approach is tested, resulting in a ranking of the 37 firms according to their performances. Using cluster and factor analysis the paper demonstrates that leading indicators are somewhat redundant, and that lagging indicators have greater significance for the purpose of comparative measurement of different SMEs performances. Whilst the approach adopted here withstood internal and external validity tests and can be seen as a robust way of comparing SMEs performances, these results may be limited to this study.