Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

Six Sigma is a business process that allows organizations to drastically improve their bottom line by designing and monitoring everyday business activities in ways that minimize waste and resources while increasing customer satisfaction. The green belt participant will learn techniques to design and deploy an enterprise-wide Six Sigma process including tools to Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC) processes. This course will prepare and provide the participant with prerequisites for Black Belt training after a sufficient amount of practical experience is attained. Participants and organizations requiring a project based approach to business methodology and improvement should attend this course.

The Green Belt course will provide information for those needing to use the principles of Six Sigma problem solving in their day-to-day job function, but who do not need to be at Black Belt level. The CBT will provide the appropriate information for the Green Belt to handle most situations with the assistance of a Black Belt. The Green Belt course will cover many areas of Six Sigma Problem Solving, requiring general understanding, basic understanding and in-depth understanding of the various principles of Six Sigma.

Introduction

Six Sigma Overview

Over the years, the term 'Six Sigma' has been used to describe a wide variety of programs and initiatives as companies adapted it to their needs. The Six Sigma process starts with strategic and annual business goals and targets. To accomplish those goals, the right projects must be selected. Then the correct people must be trained to work on those projects. Improvement plans must be developed and implemented by the teams. Operations must be managed to achieve excellence. Finally the gains must be sustained. If all of this can be accomplished then the output of the process will be achieving the set goals and targets.

Legacy Quality Improvement Processes

Most companies effect process improvement at some level. However, progress is often at an evolutionary rate. This sections provides some over information on Kaizen, PDCA, and 8D.

What Makes a Good Six Sigma Project?

A continuous flow of good Projects is the lifeblood of a Six Sigma Program. Without this flow, a Six Sigma Program will soon fail. Any Six Sigma project must directly address three factors: improved customer satisfaction, improved bottom line, and directly support the companies strategic critical success factors.

Six Sigma Teams

Teams are established to accomplish something within a timeframe. Energizing and focusing the creativity of all employees on accomplishing the most important issue the company needs to do is the strength of Six Sigma. This section explains the roles and responsibilities of a Six Sigma team.

Cost of Quality

Quality costs are those costs associated with making, finding, repairing, avoiding or preventing the occurrence of defects. Quality costs are a measure of the costs specifically associated with the achievement or non-achievement of product or service quality - including all product or service requirements established by the company and its contracts with the customers and the society.

Project Management

Today's projects are more complex than the Great Pyramids, place more stringent demands on time and cost, and require sophisticated techniques to plan systematically. In life you will make enough mistakes accidentally. You don't need to make any on purpose. Not planning your project is making a mistake on purpose. To fail to plan is to plan to fail.

Define

Project Charter

The Project Charter is the foundation, the starting point for the Six Sigma Team. It is the Project Sponsor's concise statement of the problem to be solved, the objectives that are to be attained, and gives the team the basic information they need to get off to a strong start.

Quality Audits

Quality auditing provides the organization with objective insights based on data. The main objective of this audit is to establish the initial "Current State" performance and costs of the processes. This will then serve as the baseline from which improvements and trends are monitored.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the process of comparing the current project, methods, or processes with the best practices of other organizations to quickly identify improvement opportunities. Often it serves as a "Reality Check" for the Six Sigma Team when they see that the processes of others are performing at levels that they initially may have considered "impossible" to achieve.

Process Mapping

Sometimes referred to as Process Flow Diagramming, Process Mapping is used to document the movement of products or services through the organization's manufacturing or support process. Special attention should be taken to document redundant activities, for example, the number of manager approvals that are needed before a decision can be implemented.

Value Stream Mapping

Value stream mapping is a tool that helps you see and understand the flow of material, process steps and information as a product or service makes its way through the value stream. A current state map is drawn by following a product or service's path from the customer to the supplier. This then serves as a baseline from which lean "future state" maps can be developed.

Lean Concepts

A lean operating system provides for a Systematic Approach that empowers people to plan how and when they will implement improvements. A lean system establishes a process so that work units and/or information can flow at a pace required by the customer.

Voice of the Customer / Voice of the Business

Senior leaders must constantly manage the balance of satisfying Customer needs while meeting the shareholder / stakeholder needs of constantly increasing the value of the organization. By having both of these needs clearly identified and defined, the Six Sigma Team can optimize the use of the Six Sigma process to maximize the benefits to the customers and shareholders / stakeholders.

Measure

Descriptive Statistics

What gets measured gets managed! When the problem is quantified and measured mathematically, you can use the powerful Six Sigma statistical tools to give managers insights into problems that cannot be seen using any other process. It is the power of statistics that enable managers to make bolder, more informed decisions that accelerate the rate of positive improvement in their organizations.

Measurement Systems Analysis

The old saying "garbage in, garbage out" is very true. If the measuring system itself produces a significant amount of variability into the data, any decisions made based on that data carries a high risk of being a bad decision. Measurement systems analysis assesses the quality of a measurement system to ensure that the measurement system being used is appropriate for the application.

Data Collection

Collecting data provides the information needed to solve problems. Sampling or sample sizes are determined by the acceptable risk that an organization can endure. The lower the acceptable risk the larger the sample sizes required to mitigate that risk.

Quality Tools

Quality tools to represent various types of data graphically, making it easier to draw conclusions about the data.

Probability

When a manager makes a decision, they want a high probability that they will get the benefits the Six Sigma Team have predicted, at the cost the team has estimated and understand the risks of making that decision.

Process Capability

or a process to be predictable it must first be stable. That is it must consistently produce its output with its range of "Natural" variability. After a process is stable, then the Six Sigma Team can assess its capability. That is its ability to consistently perform within its customer's needs / expectations.

Analyse

Hypothesis Testing

Testing hypotheses using statistical methods is similar to making an educated guess based on the probabilities associated with being correct. Due to sampling variation, an organization can never know with complete certainty whether a decision is right or wrong.

Analysis of Variance

ANOVA, or analysis of variance, compares multiple settings or outputs to determine if there is any statistical significance in the variation of each setting's output. It is an extremely powerful tool that can identify the true "Root Cause" of a problem. Once the true root cause has been identified, the Six Sigma team can focus its creativity and resources to eliminate the problem and fail proof the process. It can also be used to find the optimum settings of Key Process Parameters that will maximize the throughput of the process.

Correlation and Regression

Correlation can be best described as one factor that directly affects another. This affect can either be positive or negative. Regression is the determining of a statistical relationship between various factors.

Improve

Design of Experiments

A D.O.E. investigates a list of potential factors whose variation might impact the process output. This powerful tool gives managers insight into how several factors interact with each other. It may well be that the right combination of these factors would create a synergy that would produce a greater output than otherwise possible. Managers would not be able to attain these synergies without this insight.

Quality Function Deployment

Quality Function Deployment is a matrix method that is used to translate customer wants and desires into written requirements. Further deployment converts requirements to specifications at a component level and finally to the control factors on the process machinery, or "Moments of Truth" in the service industries. It allows employees to graphically see the impact of how they perform their individual jobs has on the organization's customers.

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis

FMEA, or Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, is an analytical technique used primarily by a design or process responsible engineers/teams as a means to ensure that, to the extent possible, potential failure modes and their associated causes/mechanisms have been considered and addressed. It is a key tool to identify potential sources of failures and other waste and prevent them from ever happening.

Decision Making

A typical decision making process would be a Pugh matrix where new options are compared against the current baseline when measured against program must-haves and wants. It allow the Six Sigma Team to evaluate a broad range of options and select the options that create the most value for the organization.

Error / Mistake Proofing

Other than eliminating the opportunity for errors, mistake proofing is relatively inexpensive to install and engages the operator in a contributing way. Work teams can often contribute by brainstorming potential ways to thwart error prone activities. There are many examples in consumer products: on automobiles, warning keys left in ignition; on floppy disks, shield covering disk surface and notch to correct placement; on file cabinets, interlocks that prevent more than one drawer open at a time.

Control

Control Planning

Control plans are developed to inspect products or characteristics for features that have some probability of being incorrect. There is no reason to have a control plan if all critical and significant characteristics are mistake-proofed.

Work Instructions

Work instructions are the extension of any item from a control plan or special control and identify the "Best Practice" on how to perform a function. They should be detailed enough to allow the operator, or user of the instruction, to follow it and complete the task with a very low probability of making an error. It must be as visual as possible and preferably on one sheet of paper.

Statistical Process Control

A powerful, simple tool that makes a distinction between Common and Special Causes of Variation and helps to determine whether a process is running within established control limits.

Duration: 4 Days face to face plus project support

Format: Public Courses or On site at your facility

Pricing Public: $5400+GST per participant

Pricing Onsite: Quote Per number of participants

In addition to the CBT materials, the Green Belt course includes 7 days training plus one on site coaching/consulting day.

Complete the Green Belt application form or email the QAISEA office Green Belt Booking to apply for the Lean Six Sigma Green Belt course.

Online Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Training: $339AUD per participant. Click on this link to go direct to our Lean Six Sigma Green Belt online training