Organizations embarking on implementation of Lean Six Sigma and Six Sigma improvement initiatives need to overcome substantial barriers to ensure effectiveness of the implemented approaches. In many cases, implementation of improvement initiatives involves significant investment in establishment of supporting infrastructure and training for the improvement initiatives. While Lean Six Sigma and Six Sigma were initially applied within large corporations, the interest of small and medium-sized enterprises in improvement initiatives is increasing.Implementation of Lean Six Sigma and Six Sigma faces unique barriers in small and medium-sized enterprises associated with the size and availability of the resources. Thus, the aim of this article is to examine the critical success factors that condition successfulness of Lean Six Sigma and Six Sigma implementation in manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises. Based on seven articles from six countries (UK, India, Italy, Kenya, Netherland, Malaysia), the importance of the different critical success factors are examined and compared. Further, the proposed study examines differences in the importance of the critical success factors between small and medium-sized enterprises and large corporations. For the conduct of this analysis, six additional papers from Europe, India and Brazil concerning critical success factors for the implementation of Six Sigma and Lean Sigma in larger manufacturing enterprises were taken into account. Moreover, five priority groups of critical success factors are developed for both organization sizes based on a percentile distribution. The analysis of the identified groups demonstrates similarities in the critical success factors for both types of organizations. In conclusion, it can be stated that "top management commitment" and "linking Six Sigma to business strategy" are the top priority critical success factors, for both small and mediumsized enterprises and large organizations. Additionally, for small and medium-sized enterprises, it is necessary to develop a good communication plan and link Six Sigma to customers.

Purpose To achieve higher customer satisfaction (CS), companies implement continuous improvement (CI) programs, regardless of the growing evidence of their failure to achieve declared goals. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify whether companies are able to improve CS through the application of CI; and, second, to identify what organizational practices are able to facilitate the impact of CI on CS. Design/methodology/approach To test the developed assumptions, the study uses the structural equation modeling technique. The data for analysis were collected from 304 service companies via a custom web-survey. Findings The research confirms the direct positive impact of CI on CS. Further, the study demonstrates that management commitment and rewards system that encourages employees to participate in CI play the major facilitating role in improving CS through CI. These practices accompanied by quality-oriented culture and employee training in the improvement tools provide necessary infrastructure to sustain CI in the companies over time. Additionally, regardless of the vital role of goal setting for CI established in previous research, the proposed study finds a limited ability of goal setting, as compared to other organizational practices, to facilitate CI–CS relationship. Originality/value The study contributes to the scarce field of research on CI implementation in the services environment. Further, the research assesses CS as a variable of interest, as opposite to the previous studies, considering CS as a part of the composite variable. The research assesses the impact of the training in CI methodology on the CI–CS relationship, while previous research focuses on the general, work-related training. The findings provide an important basis for further academic work in the area of quality management. The identified practices can serve as guidance for managers, implementing CI in their companies due to the high fit of the proposed model.

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