Six Sigma has been used in the hospitality industry for over 20 years. Starwood Hotels implemented Six Sigma in 2001. We’ll look at its use at Starwood through three articles and finish with an Irish hotel chain and its implementation of Lean Six Sigma.

Original Press Release from Starwood

On February 5, 2001, Starwood gave a press release on its plans to implement Six Sigma.

You can access the press release here.

We’ll follow with two summary articles on the use of Six Sigma at Starwood over the years. First, an article summarizing the use and benefits. Next, another similar article that focuses on its implementation and effectiveness.

Finally, we’ll review Cliste Hospitality’s implementation of Lean Six Sigma in its Irish hotel chain.

 

Use and Benefits of Six Sigma at Starwood

In an article titled “Room for Improvement: hotel giant resorts to Six Sigma to improve operations,” Authors Kay Chuan Tan and Ayon Chakraborty summarize Starwood Hotels use and benefits from Six Sigma.

To analyze Starwood’s use of Six Sigma the authors collected data from public domain documents.

You can find their paper here.

 

Implementation and Effectiveness of Six Sigma at Starwood

In the second summary article titled “The Quest for Quality Improvement: Using Six Sigma at Starwood Hotels and Resorts” David M. Pearlman and Harsha Chacko conducted a study to “illustrate Starwood’s utilization of Six Sigma, specifically, to document its implementation and its effectiveness.”

The authors obtained the data used from the company, external secondary sources, and by conducting unstructured interviews.

You can access their article here.

 

Lean Six Sigma at an Irish Hotel Chain

In a much more recent article (May 2021) by Chris Austin titled “Hospitality and a Lean, Six Sigma Approach,” Chris discusses how Cliste Hospitality’s adoption of Lean Six Sigma led to 21 improvement projects.

Cliste Hospitality, which owns and operates nine hotels in Ireland, explored both a Lean and a Six Sigma approach to efficiency in 2019, and after extensive research, they adopted both methodologies.

From a detailed study of the challenges faced in terms of lowered efficiency and waste generation, they generated 21 projects in the following four areas:

  • Customer Experience
  • Employee Engagement
  • Problem Solving
  • Hard Data Use

You can read the article here.