Six Sigma as the continuation of comprehensive quality management TQM is of interest to many enterprises. Unfortunately, not everybody successfully implements quality improvement projects using Six Sigma tools. This approach requires proper preparation in many areas of the company’s operation, including: organization of processes, establishing measures, employee engagement and creating conditions for continuous improvement. The goal of the article is to present on the case study the idea of using the organizational maturity model for production management to assess a readiness of organization to implement Six Sigma. The case study presents a company maturity level diagnosis and a successful project of quality and productivity improvement using the Six Sigma concept, confirming that the organization’s maturity model is the appropriate tool for assessing multi-faceted preparation for successful implementation of Six Sigma projects.

Make-To-Stock (MTS) and Make-To-Order (MTO) are the two traditional strategies in

production management. In the case of the MTS there is a growing demand for a new

approach, which is called Make-To-Availability (MTA) strategy. The paper characterizes and

compares the MTS and MTA strategies. The comparative analysis based, among others, on

computational experiments carried out in a computer program developed in Microsoft Visual

Studio 2017 Environment was presented. The models have been prepared for both strategies

with the same assumptions: external conditions (market demand) and internal conditions

(structure of the production process). The investigation of how the strategies respond to

various scenarios of demand intensity was done. The simulation models were prepared and

validated for the case of the production line in one of the industrial automation company.

The research shows that the use of the MTA strategy in the majority of cases gives much

better results than the use of the MTS strategy due to the minimization of storage costs and

the costs of non-fulfillment of the customers’ demand. The directions for further research

were also presented.