Green Belt

Green Belt is in two parts and  follows on from the one day Yellow Belt training.

Part 1 is a further three-day course in Lean or Lean Six Sigma to practitioner level

Target audience

Team members/leaders/supervisors/project and business unit managers that have attended the Yellow Belt course and are looking to complete a process improvement assignment.

Course pre-requisites

Yellow Belt trained – ideally certified. An in-house process that needs fixing!

What’s included in Part 1

Lean Green Belts use the Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) roadmap and Lean Six Sigma Green Belts use the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control roadmap (DMAIC) to:

• Create an effective project contract
• Increase the probability of project buy-in
• Establish customer high level needs
• Use mapping techniques to record and propose improvements
• Collect basic data and estimate  the existing process capability
• Identify sources of variation
• Establish the root cause of issues and propose solutions
• Test and implement solutions
• Set up control features to quantify the improvements and sustain the gains

Learning outcomes

On completion of the GB Practitioner course candidates will:

• Understand the fundamentals of Lean and Six Sigma and how this can be applied to ‘real world’ examples
• How to navigate through assignments using the roadmap Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA)  or Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC)
• A practical understanding of the key roadmap topics and tools including:
  • How to scope, project manage using gate reviews and raise an effective project contract
  • Cultural acceptance techniques to ensure the project has buy-in
  • Recognising both internal and external Customer high level needs
  • Mapping techniques to record and propose improvements to the current state
  • Using data to provide tangible measurements
  • Establishment of the current capability of the process
  • How to identify issues
  • Prioritising the key inputs and getting to the root cause
  • Developing solutions that have a line of sight back to the customer requirements
  • Performing tests and trials to evaluate your solutions
  • Applying controls to sustain your improvements
• Become a certified process improvement practitioner in eliminating waste and improving flow (lean tools) and reducing defects and process variation (six sigma tools)
• Understand what’s needed to become an ‘agent of change’.

How to certify

• Certify as a Yellow Belt practitioner
• Attend three days Green Belt practitioner training
• Co-lead and complete an improvement assignment

• Part 2 is a further four days training in Lean Six Sigma to fully certified Green Belt level

Target Audience

It’s for process improvement and lean practitioners  who want to take their problem solving skills to the next level by building in analytical and diagnostics techniques.

Course Pre-requisites

Certified or in process to become a certified Green Belt practitioner. An interest in the analytical techniques for data handling.

What’s included in Part 2

The additional 4 days training for fully certified Green Belt level (total 8 days including GB Part 1 and  Yellow Belt)

Green Belt Part 2 specialises in the analytical tools used with the Lean Six Sigma roadmap to enable candidates to advance their ability to problem solve, be more precise about locating the root cause and strengthen their understanding of standardisation necessary to sustain changes.

Tools and topics covered in GB Part 2 include:

Workshop facilitation skills

Capturing the Voice of the customer using surveys

SIPOC mapping

Value Stream Mapping – current and future

Measurement system analysis

Process capability

Process stability and control charts

Data families of variation

Graphical analysis

Correlation and regression

Intro to hypothesis testing and quantitative analysis

Running a Kaizen/Rapid Improvement Event workshop

Theory of Constraints

Change acceptance

Mistake proofing

Project close out

Practise using real world examples and case study projects

Part 2 uses Minitab or Sigma XL  software to undertake the statistical analysis work required and candidates will be able to download a free months trial.

Day 8 provides an overview of Design for Six Sigma which is used to develop and evaluate new concept options for a project using the Houses of Quality and Define, Measure, Analyse, Design, Verify (DMADV) roadmap. The course includes generating concepts using the Morph matrix and evaluating concepts using the Pugh matrix.

Learning outcomes

Certified Green Belts are on a pathway towards becoming seen as a problem solver, change agent and process improvement coach. You will become more proficient not just in using the process improvement roadmaps and technical tools but also in handling the change management more effectively.

Learning outcomes from the Green Belt Part 2 course will enable you to:

Increase proficiency in  applying the process improvement roadmaps PDCA and DMAIC

Run and facilitate an improvement workshop and lead an improvement project

Possess a deeper understanding of how the lean six sigma tools work and how they relate towards improving a process including being able to:

• Quickly assess what makes a good improvement project and how to scope it effectively
• Interpret and translate customer needs from statements to metrics
• Know which mapping techniques to use for the current and future state maps
• Capture and analyse data effectively using stat tools software and know which graphs and charts to select
• Understand the impact of data accuracy and how to minimise measurement system errors
• Assess the current capability of a process and whether you have a variation or positioning problem to fix or both!
• Test your improvement assumptions and quantify whether a significant difference in before and after has been achieved
• Identify process waste and bottlenecks and know what action to take
• Prepare and run a kaizen workshop – understand how to accelerate process improvements
• Apply solutions to transition between the current and future states – removing non-value added steps
• Increase your change management insights to become an agent for change
• Improve process sustainability by implementing error proofing and standardisation
• Apply process controls to make non-standard conditions easier to spot
• Design the functions and features for a new product or service using Design for Six Sigma methodology and the DMADV roadmap and toolkit.

The certified Green Belt course is the pathway  to progress further  to qualify as Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.

How to fully certify as a Green Belt

To fully certify as a Green Belt at Part 2 requires completion of  Green Belt Part 1,  attending Part 2 training, passing an exam and the leading of a second improvement project through to completion.