Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt is the creme de la creme of Lean Six Sigma. It is the end of the belt like structure that is Lean Six Sigma. It is aimed at candidates with a wide understanding of Lean Six Sigma through completion of the other 5 stages and acquirement of qualifications. Mainly useful for project managers and senior business delegates, putting themselves above their colleagues. Leading a Lean Six Sigma Project carries a breadth of skills and qualities that can benefit candidates in every walk of life.

Lean Six Sigma is a combination of both Lean and Six Sigma philosophies which are compatible towards the improvement of a business.

Principles of Lean

Value

Organizations have to understand the vitality of the value on the customer and not just the product. This means that they need to identify the amount that their target market is willing to pay for the product. Factors that determine this could be the quality, size, aesthetics or materials of the product. By understanding this, the business can focus on how to eliminate excess waste in an operation to maximise profit between customer consumption and expenditures of the business.

The Value Stream

The value stream is a process of assessment. The company needs to identify the overall cost of the product from the manufacturing of raw materials through to the customers disposal of the product. Identifying this helps to eliminate excess waste from the value stream to maximise the worth of the product.

Flow

This is a variable that is crucial to ensure there is no buildup of waste. If a process is stopped i.e a value chain, then waste will begin to build up and extra costs begin to occur and increase rapidly.

Pull

Keeping track of the production ensures that no excess products are being produced infront of time to decreases excess costs. If production speeds up and produces more than needed, this is considered waste and will start to build up and start to create defects in the flow.

Perfection

Lean Manufacture leaders set goals throughout the project and when all objectives have been achieved, perfection has been achieved. Elimination of root causes and a flowing system without any production problems, is considered perfection.

Six Sigma Principles

Focus on the customer- A complete focus on the customer's needs and requirements maximises the potential of sales and profit. The target market is where candidates will reply on for their profit, focusing on their needs is an essential principle to success.

Using measurements and statistical analysis-  Collection of data is a crucial part of this principle. Mathematics is a reliable source for assessment. If candidates can apply formulas and identify problems through reading graphs, candidates are able to understand their business. The work has been  done for candidates in many aspects of mathematics, candidates just have to apply the theories to their own work. A useful concept when identifying root causes in a production process.

Eliminating variation - Making sure all guidelines are followed and there is minimum variation within processes, identifies an efficient way of production and how to eliminate excess waste which does not value the customer.

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt content is concentrated on a mathematical aspect to solutions. Economic value is extremely apparent in this course and different prospects occur. Mathematical methodologies can be more flexible to different scenarios as they provide formulas which can be applied to the problem at hand. The tricky part is being able to comprehend the formulas and when to apply them. There are many different aspects of Lean Six Sigma, Black belt specific, there are more in depth features of this methodology that are covered.

Advanced Control Charts

There are two essential functions of a control chart within an improvement project such like Lean Six Sigma. These two elements focus on different aspects of a project, for example stability and control tools. A control chart is a physical  representation of the progress within a project.

Different characteristics identify different components of a project i.e shifts and trends of a process are shown through a line of best fit (central line). A time graph is the main feature of a control graph to allow assessment of improvement and time efficiency. A control chart gives the business the ability to identify the standard deviation and control limits to ensure there is no time wasted when searching for problems within project.

A concept that can be significantly hard to grasp however due to our extremely engaging and helpful courses, we will offer the best advice and guidance we can to help candidates grasp this education.

MSA

MSA is an abbreviation for Measurement System Analysis, which is a mathematical method to determine how much a measurement process needs to vary and its overall contribution. There are five different factors that are required to be investigated within MSA.

• Bias - Prejudice for or against a situation, a measurement without equal measurement.

• Linearity - A perfect relationship between two qualities represented on a graph in a straight line, therefore directly proportionate.

• Stability - Having a stable structure.

• Repeatability - A test using the same components repeatedly  in a short period of time.

• Reproducibility - An experiment or action that can be taken multiple times with the same results every time.

These are all considered when taking a measurement to ensure that no factors can jeopardise the results. This is usually a repeated process by different members of the team to ensure either a mean of results or exact results. There are percentages that judge the effectiveness of their measurement system and these are considered guidelines to the productivity of the business.

The Datrix Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification covers the following topics:

• New ways of working
• Meeting management
• Responsibility charting
• Improvement wheel
• Emotional cycle of change
• Motivation and Communication
• How to run a critical issues workshop

Advanced Tools:

• Cycle time / Takt time
• Work balancing
• RRS
• Value stream mapping
• Gage R&R
• T”&”F” tests
• Design of experiments
• Advanced control charts

Operational Performance Management:

• Designing a performance management Dash board
• Using a performance management dashboard
• Meeting management
• Improvement wheel
• Trend interpretation
• Using visual management
• Building a business case
• Performance management reporting

Leadership:

• 5 leadership principles
• Building a high performance team
• Situational leadership
• How to run quick win teams and rapid action teams
• T&F tests
• Managing resistance
• Coaching and feedback