Management Research Individual assignment Proposal

Management Individual assignment - Research Proposal Example According to Byrne (2003) and Harry (2000), Six Sigma can be classified as proven technique to improve quality of manufacturing process or reduce errors in manufacturing sector. Cho et al. (2011) found that people have common misconception regarding Six Sigma because most of the people believe Six Sigma can only be implemented in manufacturing sector but in real case, key ingredients of Six Sigma decide context of its applicability. Theoretically, it can be said from the argument of Cho et al. (2011) is that Six Sigma as part of Process Control (SPC) can be used in service industries like restaurants & hospitality sector, hospitality sector, banking services etc. However, in real business world scenario, use of Six Sigma in service sector is pretty scarce and even scholars like Crom (2000) argued that Six Sigma model is only developed for product driven sector. So, what is the actual problem in using Six Sigma in service sector? To answer this question, one has to understand the conj ectural and intangible nature of quality in case of service organizations. Gronroos (1984, p. 37) defined service quality as â€Å"The consumer compares his expectations with the service he perceives he has received, i.e. he puts the perceived service against the expected service. The result of this process will be the perceived quality of service.† It is evident from the mentioned line that service quality is being judged as par the expectation of customers and magnitude of service gap might be influenced by perception of a customer. Ladhari (2009) rightly argued that service quality cannot be easily measured due to four characteristics of services such as intangibility, heterogeneity, perishability and inseparability. According to Markovic (2006), in most of the service sectors like Quick Service Restaurants (QSR), banks, hospitals etc, customers has to consume the offering at the place of production. In case of production system, faults in output can be quantified but is p ossible to quantify service output which is intangible in nature? For Chakrabarty and Tan (2007), the answer to the question is no while Sulek (2004) stated that it is possible to implement Statistical Process Control (SPC) in order to improve quality of services. Consideration of research works of Cho et al. (2011) reveals the fact that one can measure service quality by identifying Six Sigma Key Ingredients (KIs). It is evident from the above discussion that significant amount of confusion exist regarding the use of Statistical Process Control (SPC) to measure service quality. Such level of arguments and existing confusion among scholars has influenced the researcher to take up this study and select the research topic named as â€Å"Identifying Six Sigma Key Ingredients (KIs) for Improving Customer Service in Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) in China.† Fact is that, apart from research work of Zhen (2011), very few research scholars ever tried to identify Six Sigma Key Ingre dients (KIs) as part of Statistical Process Control (SPC) in case of food service industry. According to limited knowledge of the