The Impact of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain on Six Sigma: A Systematic Literature Review of the Evidence and Implications

The dramatic development of technology in recent years has affected most organizations and companies. Artificial intelligence (AI) and Blockchain can be mentioned as the most important technologies that are developing rapidly. In Industry 4.0, complex data are produced in high volume, which makes implementing improvement projects with traditional methods lose their effectiveness. Six Sigma is one of the most prominent improvement methods organizations and companies use to identify and solve problems. Therefore, for implementing Six Sigma projects in Industry 4.0, the need to develop the traditional Six Sigma toolbox is felt. AI and Blockchain can be suitable tools for developing and improving Six Sigma for Industry 4.0. A systematic review identified 58 articles in this article that presented solutions for integrating AI or Blockchain in Six Sigma. Some articles have evaluated the performance of their proposed method by implementing the proposed models. The most widely used machine learning and deep learning algorithms in Six Sigma have been identified. Also, Six Sigma approaches that mostly use AI or Blockchain have been identified by the analysis of articles. Decision tree algorithms and artificial neural networks are used in most Six Sigma define–measure–analyze–improve–control (DMAIC) projects. Therefore, by reviewing the articles, it was found that AI and Blockchain are mainly used as efficient tools in DMAIC and the Design for Six Sigma models to implement Six Sigma projects. In this article, 28 main gaps are presented as future works for future research.