Green Belt 

Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Training and Certification: 10 eight-hour days

October 26-28, 2009; November 18-19, 2009; December 14-16, 2009; January 19-20, 2010

The training of Green Belt students represents the surest path to maximize the impact of Lean Six Sigma for an organization. Green Belt students receive a wide range of course materials in addition to the traditional Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (abbreviated as DMAIC and pronounced as de-MAY-ick) phases of Lean Six Sigma. Project management, classroom exercises to illustrate variation and Lean principles and tools are examples of a diverse course outline. Students qualify to receive Green Belt certification when their project demonstrates continued gains for four to six months and is documented in a formal project report. Importantly, we recommend that Green Belt students come to the training program with projects selected prior to training. This approach provides frame of reference for the student to better apply the course material and provides instructors the ability to tailor the course content to include examples of those projects over the ten days of training.

Green Belt training can be provided at either RMU or on-site for a contracted institution. Each option has distinct benefits and disadvantages that must be weighed on a case-by-case basis. Classes can be delivered in two, five day per week sessions that ideally, would be separated by four to six weeks to allow the student time to work on their project between the two sessions. Classes can also be delivered on a more customized schedule that will be considered upon request. Knowledge transfer is provided in the following areas:

• How to build on Lean Principles to sustain Continuous Improvement (CI).
• Understanding the essentials for an organization to meet customer requirements.
• Effectively managing material and informational flow to improve process speed.
• How to eliminate defects through variability reduction.
• Understand the basics of process and systems thinking.
• Why validated data & information is critical in factual decision making, Team formation, dynamics, and leadership skills for timely completion of projects.
• The importance of continued learning in the CI process.

The Curriculum for Green Belt Training

Session I (Days 1 - 3): Define/Measure Phase

1. Setting the Stage for Six Sigma in Industry
1. Defining Six Sigma
2. Benefits of Six Sigma way of thinking; COPQ (Cost of Poor Quality) benefits
3. Six Sigma examples in various settings
4. Six Sigma as a statistical measure, sigma capability
5. Six Sigma infrastructure, your role as a green belt and support roles
6. DMAIC and Lean overview
2. Process Measurements
1. Qualitative data: DPMO (defects per million opportunities), FPY (first pass yield)
2. Quantitative data: descriptive statistics, sigma level, sigma capability, quality measures
3. Examples of metrics in manufacturing and transactional environments
3. Selection and Management: Define Tools   Students collaborate during classroom exercises
1. Project definition
1. Understanding VOC (Voice of the Customer)
1. Operational definitions exercise
2. Pareto charts
3. Scoping tools
2. SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, Customers)
3. Project documentation - using contracts
4. Project timeline
5. Effective meetings
6. Team dynamics and development
7. Managing change and culture change
8. DMAIC checklist
4. Measure Tools
1. Thought mapping
2. Process mapping
3. Cause and Effect Matrix (C&E)
4. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

Session II (Days 4-5) Measure/Analyze Phase

1. Transforming Data into Information
1. Minitab (statistical software package) introduction
2. Pareto, histograms, run charts, box plots, scatter plots
3. Mean, median, mode, standard deviations
2. Understanding Variation
1. Exercise to demonstrate common cause vs. special cause variation
2. Introduction to control charts to understand and quantify variation
1. I-MR Charts (Individuals and Moving Range Charts)
2. X-Bar - R Charts (Average and Range Charts)
3. Measurement System Evaluation (MSE)
1. Fundamental principles of measurement processes
2. Repeatability, Reproducibility and Discrimination
4. Using Minitab to evaluate measurement systems with quantitative and qualitative data

Session III (Days 6-8) Analyze/Improve Phase

1. Lean Principles
1. Lean thinking, types of activities, types of waste
2. Value stream mapping
3. Lean toolkit overview: 5S, Poka Yoke, Visual Controls, Single Piece Flow, Kanban, Work Cell Design, Kaizan Blitz
2. Hypothesis Testing
3. Statistical Test
1. F-test
2. t-test
3. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
4. Introduction to Design of Experiments (DOE)

Session IV (Days 9-10) Improve/Control Phase

1. Project Documentation
1. Final report format
2. Control Plans
1. Sustaining the gains
2. Using control charts to control the improvements
3. Project Reviews
1. Discussions/reviews of students' projects