Black Belt is a further eight-day course for Lean Six Sigma certification. It's designed to turn out skilled problem solvers and process improvers, who can also mentor and coach other team members. The result: completed projects and continuous improvement.
Target Audience
Candidates looking for advanced lean six sigma training to potentially become full-time process improvement leaders or specialist trainers and coaches in continuous improvement.
Course pre-requisites Fully Certified or near fully certified Green Belt with a minimum of two completed improvement projects. Candidates need to have demonstrated an understanding of continuous improvement and have applied the PDCA and DMAIC roadmaps and toolkits practically. There is an expectation at Black Belt level that candidates have the potential to become competent workshop facilitators and trainers.
What's included
Day 1 - Change Management techniques - Employee engagement and empowerment Forming a team, Change Management for improvement projects using an easy to use roadmap and toolkit, Change acceptance tools and Mentoring Green Belts
Day 2 - Plan Do Check Act, Kaizen and Workshop Facilitation - PDCA cycle Kaizen thinking, roadmaps and accelerating projects. Kaizen workshop preparation, planning, event facilitation, newspaper and deliverables
Day 3 - DMAIC analytical tools Part 1 - Process metrics Measurement System Analysis for attribute and variable data Process capability Process stability and control charts
Day 4 - DMAIC analytical tools Part 2 - Correlation and Regression Hypothesis testing Quantitative analysis - means, variances and proportions Design of Experiments
Day 5 - Lean in the workshop Lean roadmaps - What does good look like? Lean workshop examples. Lean tools - Value Stream mapping, Process mapping, Visual Management, 5S, Standard work, Flow and layout, Pull systems, Ergonomics and safety, Set up reduction, Mistake proofing, Total productive maintenance, Inventory management
Day 6 - Lean in the office Offices - what good looks like Planning and implementing lean in the office using Stabilise, Standardise and Visualise roadmap Lean in the Office - valid tools including Flow systems, value stream mapping, process mapping, office layout, pull systems, visual controls, office 7 wastes, 5S work are organisation, standard work, mistake proofing and balancing schedules.
Day 7 and 8 Design for Six Sigma - new concepts - The process improvement roadmaps (PDCA and DMAIC) are aimed at fixing existing 'broken' processes - Day 7 and 8 focus on the design of new concepts for service and product applications using the Design for Six Sigma roadmap Define , Measure, Analyse, Design and Verify (DMADV). If you are designing a new process or substantially refreshing one then this is an innovative technique that uses the houses of quality to provide a connection between the customer needs, functional requirements, design features and process specifications. It is a powerful process and has been used to design new concepts for everything from airbags to theme park dinosaurs!
The following topics are covered using a case study design concept project:
- Design for Six Sigma overview
- House of Quality #’s 1 and 2
- Generating design concepts inclu creativity tools, theory of innovative solutionsTRIZ and morph matrix
- Evaluating Design Concepts incl Pugh matrix
- House of Quality #’s 3 and 4
- Design simplification
- Design scorecard
- Prototyping, pilots and pre-production
- Plus project examples
Each day starts (from Day 2) with a short exam covering the previous module so that you can study as you go rather than one large exam at the end and get instant feedback to see if you've understood the concepts.
Learning Outcomes The Black Belt course is part of a continuum of training, building on the Yellow and fully certified Green Belt courses but is a step-change for candidates to deepen their continuous improvement knowledge and extend their application from practitioner to process improvement coach.
The Black Belt training course provides candidates with all the resources and knowledge for advanced application of Lean and Six Sigma and how to navigate through projects using the roadmaps DMAIC and DMADV roadmaps and toolkits.
The knowledge gained is deeper and broader than the Green Belt course, is more analytical and enables candidates to understand how process improvement really works. Candidates completing the Black Belt course will secure the following learning outcomes:
- Confident in assessing the value-add of potential projects to increase the effectiveness of project selection
- To be able to take a wider view of continuous improvement - how it can be successfully deployed, what are the success factors and issues to avoid.
- Capable of leading (not just taking part) a continuous improvement project to completion - know which tools to apply - when and why.
- Knowledge of how to mentor other CI practitioners eg Yellow and Green Belts
- Confidence in knowing which tools to apply to an improvement process to accelerate completion
- Understanding of how the different Continuous Improvement tools interact and connect and when to use them
- Practical knowledge on how to run a kaizen workshop or rapid improvement event
- Knowing what is needed to manage change and the ability to apply this successfully to a real process improvement project
- Capability of becoming the go-to person for Continuous Improvement in your organisation
- Understanding of how lead measures will drive behaviours and attitudes to improve performance
- To become competent on the application of statistical software, how to apply it, what it means and the correct assumptions to make. The intention is not for candidates to become statisticians but they will become trained to the level of being able to help others.
- Increased capability to analyse data and understand how to practically use statistical tools - being able to prove that there is a difference between before and after
How to certify
Fully certify as a Green Belt and then:
- Complete Black Belt training.
- Lead and complete a DMAIC/DMADV project.
- Mentor two Green Belt projects to completion.
- Achieve $250k net benefits from all projects (self and mentored).
- Pass the exam >70%.
- Undertake 2 from list - Deliver 4 modules of training, Lead a Kaizen, Assist Continuous Improvement deployment
A Black Belt needs to be seen as a subject matter expert; as a process improver, problem solver, workshop facilitator and change agent. A Black Belt must be able to lead projects to completion, mentor/coach Green Belts and be able to help others on tool usage and roadmap deployment. Not all Black Belts want to be a trainer but they do have to demonstate expertise in process improvement and change management.
Benefits of an In-house training solution
Running a course In-house will result in additional benefits such as significantly lower cost per candidate, focussed training agenda, flexible schedule to suit service/operational needs and ability to work directly on company process improvement projects during the training.
Included in the course is 2 days to provide practitioner training for Design for Six Sigma for new concepts using the Define, Measure, Analyse, Design and Verify (DMADV) roadmap. Candidates will learn how to use the Houses of Quality for designing a new product or service and be able to understand how the houses connect the voice of the customer with the functional and design parameters of the concept. Other tools covered include Pugh matrix, Morph matrix and Concept generation and evaluation.