For the next two years, many Forutne 1000 companies say they expect to see revenue growth as the economy recovers from the Great Recession, yet a significant fraction of these firms also say they plan to continue cost-reduction efforts, some of which involve Six Sigma, according to a recent Deloitte survey.

The Deloitte survey of 139 executives from Fortune 1000 corporations based in the United States found that 90 percent of respondents exepcetd to see revenue growth, while 80 percent said they would enact further cost-cutting methods during the same period. About 50 percent of the respondents said they planned to reduce costs by increasing emphasis on their continuous improvement programs, such as Lean and Six Sigma. Thirty-five percent said they plan to drive all divisions to reduce a fixed percent of their costs, and 54 percent said they expect to reduce costs by establishing targets in excess of 10 percent.

Regarding the cost-cutting efforts enacted during the 24 months prior to the survey, which was conducted last July, 73 percent of respondents said they had implemented new policies to strengthen compliance systems, 67 percent improved their forecasting, budgeting and reporting processes, and 26 percent installed IT infrastructure systems and business intelligence platforms. Despite these efforts, however, 36 percent of the companies surveyed reported that they had fallen short of their cost-reduction targets during the previous two years.

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