PurposeThe purpose of the work presented in this paper is to capture the current state of Six Sigma as well as to document the current practices of Six Sigma through a systematic literature review so as to extend and update the previous work of Brady and Allen.Design/methodology/approachThe approach to this paper is to answer the questions such as “what is Six Sigma?”, “what are the applications of the Six Sigma?”, “what are the main enablers and barriers to its application?” and “what are the emerging trends?” These questions are used to guide the search of papers from various publication databases even if it is expected that existing literature might not be sufficiently developed to translate each question directly into a finding. The literature is then analysed and the major emerging themes are presented.FindingsSeven key findings (topics on which the views of the authors converged) and two issues (topics on which authors had differing views) have been established. These include the interpretation of Six Sigma, tools and techniques, implementation of Six Sigma, benefits, adoption, enablers and links to other disciplines.Originality/valueThe systematic literature review approach used in this paper allows emerging trends and issues in Six Sigma to be highlighted in a structured and thematic manner, enabling the future work to progress as Six Sigma continues to develop and evolve. The findings also open up new opportunities to apply Six Sigma in the fields that are not widely explored before for instance sustainability and product‐service systems.
Fine time‐resolved images of the development of lightning bidirectional leaders below the cloud base were captured by a high‐speed camera in association with multiband electromagnetic field measurements. The bileaders tended to originate at a radial distance of about 200 m from a progressing positive leader channel, propagating more or less radially toward and away from the main channel. Significant asymmetrical channel extensions at opposite ends were clearly recognized. The positive ends of the bileaders propagated in single paths with average speed of 6.1 × 104 m/s, while the opposite negative end involved obvious branching and stepping propagation with average speed of 1.6 × 105 m/s. The bidirectional leaders eventually connected to the existing main positive leader, producing new branches of the flash. Another cause of positive leader branching was that the positive leader split at its head and developed into different branches synchronously, which were sometimes invisible but were revealed by recoil leaders.
The present study investigated the impact of various personal and organisational characteristics on organisational commitment of employees working at different hierarchical levels. Age, length of service and locus of control of employees were studied as the personal characteristics, whereas perceived job characteristics and organisational structure were studied as the organisational characteristics. A sample of 240 employees working at different hierarchical levels, namely, executive, supervisory and rank and file/blue-collar worker from a public sector unit were assessed on the measures of organisational commitment, locus of control, job characteristics and organisational structure. Multiple linear regression analysis (simultaneous) revealed that favourably perceived organisational characteristics and internal locus of control had significant positive impact on organisational commitment of the executives. Age and length of service had no significant impact on organisational commitment of this cadre of employees. However, a different set of predictors of organisational commitment was obtained for employees working at lower hierarchical levels. Length of service was the most dominant predictor of organisational commitment of the supervisors followed by organisational structure. Other predictors had no significant impact on organisational commitment of this group of employees. For the workers, only locus of control was found to have significant positive impact on their organisational commitment.
An uncommon three‐stroke positive cloud‐to‐ground (+CG) lightning flash was observed by synchronous multifrequency radiation sensors, and the three‐dimensional development of the channel was carefully mapped. Results show that three positive strokes grounded at different points approximately 4–8 km apart and time intervals between neighboring +CG strokes were 85 and 222 ms, respectively. This +CG flash was preceded by an intracloud (IC) discharge. The locations of the termination points on the ground were just below the preestablished horizontal IC discharge channels, and the three strokes were linked with each other through sharing horizontal negative leader channels inside the cloud. There were stepping pulses less than 0.4 ms before the first and second return strokes (RSs), and their location results were distributed nearby the following RS, indicating that the pulses might be associated with the attachment process. The first and second positive strokes occurred when the horizontal in‐cloud negative channel stopped extending, while the third positive stroke occurred below the opposite end of an advancing negative leader in the cloud. The above results suggest that the downward positive leader preceding the strokes possibly developed either from different decayed leader channels or from the opposite end of an advancing leader channel. A high‐speed camera captured a downward positive attempted leader from another +CG flash, revealing how a downward positive leader incepted from a horizontal negative lightning channel.
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