Various Levels Of Six Sigma Certification

Six Sigma is a methodological strategy by which errors in a company's current processes and plans are identified and strategies to rectify the same are formulated. It is fact-based technique, involving a lot of data handling, which provides scientific results for cost cutting and reduction in waste of resources. Today, many organizations, large and small scale, are applying Six Sigma to ensure improved, faster and cheaper services to their consumers without compromising on the quality quotient.

Various Levels

Implementation of Six Sigma requires professionals who have been trained in the program and have had exposure to practically applying the concepts in different organizations across industries to know how to go about its application on the job. There is a Six Sigma certification program that has to be undertaken for gaining knowledge about this particular quality measurement practice. Six Sigma certification is similar to other professional courses in that after having cleared specified guidelines and followed the required procedure, individuals are certified as capable of employing the gained knowledge in their respective field. There are several stages of the program and with each qualifying level, certain tests that have to be cleared. These levels are labeled in the same manner as a martial arts certification grade. There are various belts such as green belt, black belt and master black belt awarded to professionals who complete corresponding stages of the course.

Green Belt

The first level is completed when an individual finishes two weeks of training and passes the qualifying exam. This level is termed Green Belt, which teaches all the essential methodologies. The curriculum for the Green Belt involves DMAIC, which stands for five interrelated phases: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. It defines customers, their needs, recommended products and services, the assignment limits and plotting process flow to improve current methods. It measures performance by developing and collecting data from numerous sources and scrutinizing it for flaws by comparing it with surveys. The Analyzing phase bridges the rift between present methods and targeted results. Improving stage works out various solutions to redefine the earlier processes and deploys implementation plans. The Control stage teaches how to maintain the new changes that have been introduced and maintain the documentation and contemporary systems in accordance with the goals.

Black Belt

The Black Belt is awarded to a professional who completes four weeks of training, which involves Green Belt curriculum as well. This phase's curriculum covers Green Belt subject matter as well. Black belt certified personnel usually train other Six Sigma aspirants and Green Belt holders, and in the process improve their abilities and skills as well. The Black Belt level enables individuals to master the Six Sigma roadmaps, extensive arithmetical methodologies and cross-functional process improvement. Black belts usually take up responsibility as Six Sigma team leads.

Master Black Belt

A person who has undertaken more than the required four weeks training and implements it in an organization as a Six Sigma program manager is awarded the Master Black Belt. These personnel are responsible for imparting knowledge to help Green Belt level and Black Belt level learners in improvising on their projects. They apply their skills in an organization by coaching other employees and helping them achieve the Green Belt and Black Belt certification without the company having to spend on training separately.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sixsigmaonline.org">six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

Six Sigma For The Non-Manufacturing Sector

The Six Sigma revolution has systematically taken over various sectors of the industry owing to its methodological process variations of working towards achieving targets and eliminating any defects occurring in them throughout the procedure. Since it aims at providing top class service and works towards being a reliable and valuable enterprise for its customers, it has made an entry into areas such as banking, telecommunications, marketing, insurance, healthcare, software and construction.

Range Of 6 Sigma

Earlier the scope of Six Sigma was limited to manufacturing processes, which accounted for only two percent of the United States industry. Nowadays, the non-manufacturing corporations such as IT management, Finance, Human Resource, Sales and services have also realized the need for top quality and are implementing Six Sigma to improve their service value. In most non-manufacturing organizations, quality of the soft processes is banked on heavily for the company's success.

The non-manufacturing course follows the 5S code under 6 Sigma system, which is Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. The company requires classifying various items and then eliminates the ones, which are not related to the process and red tags them. This clears space for a much-required process that needs to be implemented on a daily basis. Secondly, it defines a work path for all individuals, decreasing the wastage of labor and focusing on specified details of the job. Polishing the work skills and worker's knowledge is also focused on to keep the work force updated with the latest developments of the world in fields of science, technology, economics, finance and others.

Need For 6 Sigma In Non-Manufacturing Ground

The non-manufacturing corporations mainly deal with customers, suppliers and clients on a routine basis. It encompasses those soft processes that are the driving force behind the production and distribution of every product and service. The soft processes are human centric and each situation is a unique case hence, it requires scientific application to reduce and manage the variances. This necessitates standardization, as the quantity of automated equipment is less and human resource is greater.

Performance And Efficiency

Efficiency is another factor which demands Six Sigma application. The managers are required to think and formulate utility processes to enhance the working conditions for subordinates thereby extracting optimum work out of them. There would be no point in extracting work from employees unless and until it is efficient to further the productivity, quality and quantity. Six Sigma provides tools that can be implemented to boost labor confidence and motivate them to better performance levels thus increasing not only their advancement but also elevates the company standards in the market.

Practical Aspects Of Implementation

Managing finances is the basic aim of all non-manufacturing concerns. To maintain an organization's status is a difficult job and furthering its stand is a Herculean task. Without adequate finances the company cannot sustain itself and implementing Six Sigma would help in sorting out the accounting needs.

Six Sigma has chances of working wonders for the non-manufacturing sector if the managers and policy makers are more receptive towards changes and new conceptual ideas.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

Change Management In Six Sigma

Change is the only constant thing in the world and businesses are no exception to this universal principle. The aim of change is bringing about continuous improvement in the competitive world through which businesses hope to surpass their competitors to meet customer needs better than the rest.

Change Meets Resistance

You need to anticipate resistance from unexpected corners while contemplating and proposing change. This could be for the first Six Sigma project or for the subsequent project, despite rigorous results with previous project implementations. Workers may respond by ignoring the change, by refusing or failing to comprehend changes, disagreeing with apparent benefits and resorting to delay tactics and tantrums. Other instances can be ignorance from other sections within the organizations and non-cooperation on projects

Managing The Change In Six Sigma

Project leaders understand that most resistance has no valid reasons.

1. For example, let us take the case of ignoring the change. People are opposed to change just because they don't want a change. Change entails doing things in a different way, which demands adoptability regardless of its simplicity. They assume ignoring the change proposal will ultimately lead to its withdrawal. Make it an irreversible change, perhaps by associating annual review to the success of the changed process.

2. Failure to comprehend is another place to manage the change assertively, although this is not intentional. Handling things can be easier in this case. Use additional sessions to explain, such as a lunch meeting, one-on-one meetings; mailers, tables, and calendars which are visible daily and can be used for tools.

3. Not accepting or ridiculing the true values of the benefits is another way of resisting change, which the Master Black Belt must anticipate. Use independent sources or/and positive results from other departments or projects to prove your point. See that the points are valid and the team can relate to them.

4. Failure to achieve speed: Slow progress in change initiatives may bog you down, forcing you to go through multiple steps, which you may want to skip, even though they are essential. But practically, this could be futile. Break the illusion of speed and build up the momentum as you progress on a scientific path only. This is more permanent and speedier than a diluted and scattered set of activities.

5. Sustaining and sharing the vision: They key to longevity of support down the line is the shared vision, the dream and positive attitudes. Following up launches with a flurry of short-lived activities achieves nothing. But the workforce needs to be galvanized regularly to keep the vision alive. Communicating and getting together regularly will help in this regard.

6. Proof of the pudding is in eating it: Shareholders look for economic benefits out of every project, although not opposed to changes as long as they see appreciation to top line and bottom line figures in the financial statement. You can only prove to them when you show increased profits riding on more volume and enhanced quality.

Managing the change in Six Sigma is no different from doing it elsewhere. But the scale of the operation and the interests concerned along with wisdom should guide the way ahead.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts

Six Sigma In Data Warehousing

The primary reason that corporations introduce Six Sigma into data warehousing boils down to cost reduction. Large corporations are incurring huge expenditures, most of the times running into millions of dollars, which eats into stakeholders' margin, in creating and maintaining data warehouses. The criticality of data warehouses can be understood by their vital role in support to prediction of business performance.

There is no denying the fact that data warehousing is in a way, the powerhouse of Six Sigma deployment. In early stages of projects, data warehousing allows for better planning of deployment, design and tuning of the production environment.

Data Warehousing Basics

Data warehousing components are complex in nature and are multifaceted. The various components are either developed in house or by a third party or in joint development at the party's place of business. Typically, designers focus on functional and business needs and not on performance constraints faced by the production environment. The consequence of this costly mistake is the possibility of missing deadlines and reworking the project, which are manifestations of operational inefficiencies.

Challenges to Data Warehouse Design

It is not new that modern day data warehouses are built for auto refreshing and/or compatible for at least real time updating. ETL, as extraction, transformation and loading of data flow is a very resource-consuming exercise in data warehousing. The importance of data warehousing increases several times, considering the fact that data structures are both strategic and functional.

Even the real time refreshing of data becomes a daunting task with the refresh window getting clogged straining server resources. Then there are some other factors that have a play in affecting the performance of ETL.

Meeting the Challenge to Quantify the Data Warehouse Effect

Quantifying the effects of data warehouse is to project whether challenges can be scaled. The recent trend in data warehouse development is to treat them as belonging to the same family or group. Consider dedicating each family to a particular geographical location, and other subsets of respective hierarchical data. Warehousing modules for individual data groups (families) are developed at their initial stages and new ones are taken care off as and when they arise and are just plugged into the main data warehouse. The database could contain three fundamental tables such as tables to store attributes of data; storage of linking information; and finally, aggregated data ready for use.

Applying Six Sigma Elements into Software Development

Applying Six Sigma elements into software development typically helps in identifying potential problems in production if the development is done in the early stages of the project. Secondly, the mammoth task of data warehousing can return positive results if deployment plans are fine tuned before implementation.

The self-assessing nature and the provisions for internal auditing shed light on the course of implementation. At the same time, one cannot forget that databases developed remain tied to the system architecture on which they are built and bear heavily on the accuracy of predictions in a fluctuating business environment, ironically for which they are built.

About the Author

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

How Much Does Six Sigma Cost?

Most companies contemplating Six Sigma implementation have most of the costs worked out beforehand. This follows the assumption that taking additional work means involving more people. You either hire people on fee base or recruit them on your payroll at a cost. Well, then there is the cost of implementation above this, which can run into quite a few thousands of dollars depending upon the project on hand.

But is that the cost of Six Sigma? There are several schools of thoughts and arguments about how to arrive at the cost of Six Sigma and one of which advocates an interesting theory. This appears to be the closest of all the definitions of Six Sigma.

Cost of Six Sigma

The cost of Six Sigma is the cost of lost opportunities due to errand processes or procedures which could have been saved had the procedures or the processes been corrected at the expense of a fraction of the cost.

Cost Consideration Before Project Selection

While contemplating the deployment, one needs to think about the composition of the team as well. The composition of the team can be so organized to as to contain the cost of hiring. The big question however, is whether the project team be placed within the purview of the QA department or be kept independent. Should the task force you are considering to form be composed of consulting Black Belts with select internal employees or should you purely consider only the freshly trained internal Black Belts? Consider whether cost of training will help save the cost of consultation and time, keeping in mind the future projects.

Some Realistic Points Of View

The truth about Six Sigma certification is no one is going to certify your organization after the implementation, as there is no such certifying standard just yet. This implies that both the implementation and achievement are relative, although measurable in terms of cost saved. But there not yet one single universally accepted standard barometer to tell whether the cost saved is absolute.

Let's just accept it; it is within the reach of the best employees of an organization to pull off wonders for their employer. They can be trained in-house or they can be asked to study 'how to' books and tools by attending a seminar or two. The next best step towards saving cost of Six Sigma is piggy backing on forums and discussion groups. This is absolutely possible, considering that many small enterprises have done this with great a degree of success.

Continuous self-education, forming of the team and introduction to not just Six Sigma tools and procedures but to the tools of management and cost give a broader picture. Six Sigma is no magic wand; it takes a excellent analytical and reasoning ability with dedicated and sustained efforts towards cost reducing (i.e; when we say problem solving.)

The cost of a Black Belt could run from $100,000 or more depending on the project at hand. The number of Black Belts is not something which is entirely decided by you if you are hiring Six Sigma consultants.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts

Six Sigma Certification - Benefits for your Business

No matter what, your business will benefit from Six Sigma certification; unless, of course, some unforseen situation happens to disrupt the implementation of the Six Sigma methodology; not the least of which is inadequate Six Sigma training.

Six Sigma Certification - Will It Really Benefit Your Organization?

The success of Six Sigma certification and implementation depends on many factors. It requires nothing less than a relentless effort and dedication to see that it succeeds. Although specific procedures may be in place, an equal responsibility lies on upper management to dedicate their 100% of their time and resources to this mammoth task. The top and bottom ends of your business, and all those in between, need to come together with single minded contributions to make Six Sigma certification and implementation successful.

Six Sigma Certification Benefits To Your Business - An Overview

You need to realize that, before the real implementation begins with Six Sigma methodology, the groundwork needs to be laid. Depending on the size and culture of your business, your team needs to have a brainstorming session, with key focus on potential benefits and consequences of having your employees attain Six Sigma certification. As the employer, you need to sponsor your employees in their Six Sigma training efforts. The decision to go for Six Sigma certification is nothing less than a dollars and cents decision.

Benefits To Your Business

Six Sigma certification benefits are both tangible and intangible. Intangible benefits can be in the form of customer loyalty that will follow the life of your business. Below we examine some of the benefits of Six Sigma certification.

1. Increase In Your Bottom Line: Six Sigma certification results in improved processes, better utilization of resources like finances, time and materials and reduction in the cost of production. On the customer side, there is higher satisfaction with products/services. This improves your bottom line substantially.

2. Six Sigma Certification Increases Shareholder Value: Fundamentally, this results from increased revenues, but in addition to this, there is increased customer loyalty and confidence that raises the stock values as well as the value to shareholders (to whom you are responsible).

3. Total Customer Satisfaction: Customers get more than what they asked for on the product/service side, at a lower price or higher value.

4. Decreased Employee Attrition: Six Sigma training boosts employee morale due to a reduced workload. Six Sigma certified employees realize the positive returns of quality work, which keeps them motivated. This reduces employee turnover and burnout.

5. Six Sigma Certification Creates A Win-Win Situation For The Supply Chain: In converting supplier-customer relationships to long-term partnerships, both parties win. Six Sigma training and certification accelerates this process with its focus on quality; prices come down and both the product quality and life cycle time improve.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solutions - Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

Six Sigma Tools

Statistics are at the heart of Six Sigma’s powerful methodology for quality improvement. It pays to get to know some of the most important of the Six Sigma statistical tools.

Control Charts

The control chart is the fundamental tool of statistical process control; a proven technique for improving productivity. It monitors the variation of key characteristics and indicates the range of variability that is built into a system. Control charts provide diagnostic information about process capability that can be used to analyze variation in process data to demonstrate whether a process is operating consistently. The bounds of the control chart are marked by upper and lower control limits that are calculated by applying statistical formulas to data from the process. Data points that fall outside these bounds represent variations due to irregular causes, which can then be identified and eliminated. Control charts are effective in defect prevention and will help ensure that your process performs consistently. From them, you can, in a precise manner, monitor, control, and improve on process performance over time. This will allow you to be able to predict fluctuations, lower costs and ensure the process has a higher effective capacity.

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

FMEA is a powerful structured approach that helps you to identify and counter weak points in the early conception phase of products and processes. Using FMEA allows you to analyze any system or subsystem in manufacturing or service industries in the early stages of the process. This systematic methodology identifies potential failure modes in a system caused by either design or process deficiencies. It also identifies critical or significant design or process characteristics that require special controls to prevent or detect failure modes. FMEA improves the quality of products and services and processes by preventing problems from occurring. It documents and tracks action taken to reduce risk while it integrates with the DMAIC methodology.

Histogram

A histogram is used to graphically summarize the distribution of a data set. A histogram is constructed by dividing the range of data into equally sized segments. This data tool enables you to quickly and easily answer several important questions: what distribution does the data have? What is the most common system response? Is the data symmetric or does it contain outliers?

Pareto Chart

A pareto chart is used to graphically summarize the relative importance of the differences between groups of data. A pareto chart is constructed by dividing the range of data into groups. The vertical axis of the pareto chart is the cumulative percentage, and the horizontal axis of the pareto chart is the groups of response variables. Unlike the histogram, the pareto chart is ordered in descending frequency magnitude. The Pareto Chart allows you to focus your efforts to achieve the greatest improvements by identifying the largest issues facing the process. It identifies the 20% of sources that are causing 80% of the problems.

Peter Peterka is President of Six Sigma us. For additional information on Six Sigma Black Belt or Minitab programs contact Peter Peterka at http://www.6sigma.us He is the Principal Consultant in practice areas of DMAIC and DFSS. Peter has eleven years of experience performing as a Master Black Belt, and has over 15 years experience in industry as an improvement specialist and engineer working with numerous companies, including 3M, Dell, Dow, GE, HP, Intel, Motorola, Seagate, Xerox and even the US Men's Olympic Team. For partial list look here. Peter is a certified a Master Black Belt and holds an MS degree in Statistics from Iowa State and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Purdue. Peter worked for 3M over 10 years where he gained extensive experience applying Sigma Methodologies to a variety of processes.

Peter has successfully developed Six Sigma deployment strategies and training for Product and Process Development, Manufacturing and Business Process Improvement. His broad experience across many technologies helped him gain insight on how to apply Six Sigma methods to Business Processes.