5 Essential skills to be a outstanding Six Sigma Black Belt and Green Belt
This is Ian, a Six Sigma Black Belt with 7 years of experience in Lean Six Sigma coaching and training.
In this article, I summarized 5 Essential skills to be a outstanding Six Sigma Black Belt and Green Belt.
Whole picture of Six Sigma
Six sigma is a problem solving method that combined with many other subjects. To handle six sigma project well, you have to know how these subjects and tools be accommodated each other in six sigma project.
For example, if you are going to handle a production improvement project with DMAIC flow, you must know:
In Define phase, you should complete a Project Charter, apply Voice-of-Customer to identify your customer demand, apply Kano map and Quality Function Deployment to setup critical project metrics, and discuss milestone with teammates.
In Measure phase, you could apply SIPOC or Value Stream Map to define current process flow, and use graphic tools such as Pareto chart to find the major issues. In this phase, apply descriptive statistics to measure data distribution is also useful.
In Analyze phase, you are going to find root cause by Fishbone Diagram, Cause & Effect Matrix, or 5-Why analysis. And plan countermeasure for each critical issue.
In Improve phase, you should test your improvement plan in small area. Design of Experiment, Hypothesis Testing, and Lean tools are useful to exam the actions are effective or not.
In Control phase, you could deploy improvement plan in a wide area. To maintain the outcome, Standard Operation Procedure, Control Plan, Failure Mode and Effect Analysis, and Statistical Process Control are generally used.
I draw a Six Sigma DMAIC mind map to help you pick up the whole picture.
Statistics and Analytic skill
You don’t need to be a statistician, but many topics are necessary.
Descriptive statistics: Data type in continuous & discrete, Central Tendency & Tendency of Dispersion
Inferential statistics: Population & Sampling, Central Limit Theorem, Hypothesis testing, Analysis of Variance, Design of Experiment, Regression.
Probability: Random variable, Distributions(especially Normal)
Analytic skill is also key to conduct complex analysis, you need to know how to use Minitab, JMP, or Excel to come out analysis result and interpret it.
Quality tools and history
In addition, quality tools are also key in six sigma project.
You need to be familiar with
QC 7 tools: Check sheet, Fishbone diagram, Histogram, Pareto chart, Control chart, Scatter plot, Stratification
New QC 7 tools: Affinity diagram, Interrelation diagram, Tree diagram, Matrix diagram, Matrix Data analysis chart, Arrow diagram, Process Decision Program chart
Lean tools: Toyota Production System, Kanban, ECRS, Just-in-Time, Pull system, one piece flow, Poka-yoke
Generally, you are the key person and responsible to drive Continuous Improvement Program in the enterprise. Knowing history about Total Quality Management and other continuous improvement methods is beneficial in teaching and coaching. It makes you be subject matter expert.
Project Management skill
A Six sigma project leader will need to cooperate with many other teams and management. To well communicate with them, you need to know Stakeholder analysis, ARCI, Cost and Resource management, Risk management, Schedule management.
Project Management is another big topic, we cannot list all detail here, but really suggest you to invest some time. When you become Black Belt or even Master Black Belt, you will lead much bigger and complicated projects. Project Management skill help you be versatile and control many things easily.
Practical experience
Last but not least, you should not only learn six sigma from paper, applying all tools mentioned above in your daily job is the short cut to master in this field.
To test and prove your knowledge, to earn a certificate is a good choice to announce that you are an expert in Six sigma.
For Six sigma certificate organization, here I list some choices for you:
Well-known
International Association for Six Sigma Certification
The Council for Six Sigma Certification
Cheap certification fee
International Six Sigma Institute
Management and Strategy Institute
You can find many Free training material in above website, and choose the best suitable one for yourself. Actually, you can also find good material via YouTube.
Six Sigma Full Course | Six Sigma Explained | Six Sigma Green Belt Training | Simplilearn
Remember, to earn certificate is an evidence to prove your knowledge, but practical experience is the key to find a good six sigma job.
