A unified model for the implementation of both CMMI and 6σ

During recent years, the major driving forces of customer preference, vehicle safety, environmental protection, and flat demand for new cars have led to a proliferation of car models and associated price reduction in the auto supply chain. To react to the complex and competitive environment, auto suppliers feed the urgent need to conduct continual improvement (CI) in an effective and systematic way. Thus, this paper presents a framework for CI. The integrated development system is proposed to integrate both capability maturity model integration and the 6 sigma approach. By implementing the framework, an automaker can establish a solid process-based management system, identify critical processes, and optimise these processes. For demonstrating the application of this framework, a case study is presented; and the result shows that all expected processes performance targets are achieved, which have dramatically improved by 70% compared with the past records. Apparently, the proposed framework would act as a useful reference to improve an organisation's process maturity.