Reducing product returns through the Six Sigma method in a supermarket

Abstract

The intense competition in many sectors in recent years has led businesses to seek process improvement methods. While businesses that desire to be ahead of their competitors often try to reduce costs by improving operations in production, they focus on customer satisfaction in the service sector. Increasing customer satisfaction is quite significant because it not only ensures customer loyalty but also increases the number of customers. The Six Sigma method is mostly preferred by large corporate companies. However, in this study, a simple framework is proposed for businesses whose resources are not very large. To this end, the Six Sigma method was implemented to reduce product returns from corporate customers in a large-scale supermarket in Şanlıurfa. The potential causes of defects were determined by following the steps involved in the Six Sigma method, and the collected data were analyzed. By analyzing the collected data covering the reasons for product returns, the factors that came to the fore were matched with the potential causes determined by brainstorming. The two root causes deeply that affected the product returns from corporate customers were the insufficient training of the staff taking the orders and the lack of an order form. These two root causes accounted for 61% of the total product returns. Then some improvement actions were taken to reduce the product returns, and a monitoring system was established to ensure sustainability.