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Absolutely not!
This is like asking, “Can you create a surgeon in a five-day certification class?” I don’t know about you, but I do not want to have surgery performed by someone with only five days of experience in a classroom. So the same goes for a Lean Six Six Sigma Green Belt certified member, certification training, tests, and project completion don’t come easy, but it is totally worth it.
“Do we get our Green Belt Certification after the Course?”
My team and I get calls on a weekly basis asking us to teach our 5-day Lean Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt certified Courses. A question I am asked in most of these conversations is, “Do we get our Green Belt Certification after the Course?” This question leads to me having to explain what it takes to transform into an effective Six Sigma Green Belt truly…
What does it take to become a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt?
Short answer is; education and experience!
Education
Let’s focus on “education.” This gets us back to the question “Can you create a Six Sigma Green Belt in five days.” My answer earlier was “No” and I stick by that answer. You can, however, effectively teach the body of knowledge of a Six Sigma Green Belt in five days.
I can read a book or take a short course on plumbing but that does not make me a plumber. A Six Sigma Green Belt, like a Plumber, needs experience in their discipline to become effective. After the SSGB certification has had effective training, they should be able to practice their trade on less significant processes so that when they make mistakes (and they will), the mistakes will not be devastating to the process.
The Green Belt will be enamored during the five-day class with all the powerful tools and tests they learn. Once they leave the class, however, they will retain 5%-20% of what was taught. When that person gets back to their workplace, they will return to their reactive modes. This is where projects die if not properly mentored. In our courses, our Master Black Belt mentors are assigned to each Green Belt to coach them until they effectively complete their projects.
Experience
Now let’s talk about “experience.” Our 5-day Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certified course includes mentorship (or coaching) before and after the course. Most Green Belts we teach in our open-to-the-public and private on-site courses do not have an experienced Six Sigma Black Belt or Master Black Belt mentor in their organization.
Before the course, the Six Sigma Green Belt training test needs help choosing a certification project with the proper scope. Without this help from an experienced mentor, the GB often ends up choosing a project that is too complex. They also need help choosing a project that will allow them to use the statistical tools that are part of the Six Sigma Green Belt Body of Knowledge.
Our SSBB or MBB Mentors are there to help the GB choose the right project and to help them stay on the path to project completion while bringing all of their experience to the table as well.
About three hours
You may think that our Mentors would spend a lot of time with each student. We actually spend on average, three hours mentoring. We have a rule that we leave with each one of our students, “We (the MBB’s) are your last resort.” We teach our Green Belts to be critical thinkers and to solve problems. We provide the foundation to do so through articles, videos, websites, and more… and we show them that they can go to find their answers. Once they have exhausted every avenue, then we are there to help.
The keys to creating a successful Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
In our experience, the keys to creating a successful SSGB are:
- Mentoring the Green Belt before their training with the project selection fase to help them pick the right project.
- Teaching them the tools and methodology that they need to know to be successful.
- Providing an infrastructure through relevant articles, videos, websites, etc. where they can find the answers.
- Post course mentoring to provide guidance, knowledge, experience and direction.
- A well-developed DMAIC tollgate solution to keep the Green Belts on track.
- Time! (Usually three to six months)
We see Six Sigma GB and BB training weekly in different organizations that only took a test after a course and received their Certification. I’ve seen people who got their certification immediately after taking a short online course. Often, they get hired into unsuspecting organizations, and eventually, they “operate” on a critical process, and the results are devastating!
What is your opinion?
What is your opinion? Can you effectively create a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt in just 5 days?
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I believe there’s an outlier.
There are companies that are very far down the continuous improvement maturity path. Along the way they have transformed their culture such that all key metrics are tracked with clean data, all key processes are mapped with FMEA’s developed and updated periodically. Critical process inputs are also control-charted and process owners review performance focusing on proactive searches for near misses.
Also along the way, prior Belt projects have established mistake-proofing and effective control plans after Leaning much of their processes down to mainly Business Value Added steps.
And above all, along the journey, team members have been exposed to tools and the problem solving mindset for a long period of time.
So wouldn’t it be possible for someone in that environment who lives this every day, and possibly has been part of several GB and BB projects already, to take a focused course with a project already selected, and with all available data present, perform a Kaizen-like project through improvement? Pending a review of short/long term improvement run-rate, that could possibly be a scenario where their certification is valid, but probably has produced a better Belt than in most companies where Certificate winners never see another project.
Of course, how many companies are that far down the maturity road?
Something I would like to see (or be part of that culture development).
Same answer as yours – No. You stated that you could teach the BOK for GB. That would depend on what you consider the GB BOK. What we teach cannot be done in 5 days with a class of 15 or more students. If you shrink the class or extend the hours in the classroom possibly. Increasing the hours does decrease the amount people retain not to mention that if your training is tool focused that is simply cruel and unusual punishment.
Experience is a serious issue. That should not be a revelation to anyone who has ever seen Bloom’s Taxonomy. There is no value in any of this beyond academic value until you get to the application level.
The secret to effective GB is how they are set up in your organization. Projects are difficult in Define and Measure and a little less difficult in Analyze. After Analyze it is pretty much an autopilot thing. I have had customers who move GB’s into a room with BB’s and give them 2-3 weeks full time to get their projects through DM and some A. It worked for them. Others put BB’s on the team. There are a variety of solutions. What it takes is deciding that the GB program is important and that you are going to understand how to make it work. If all you are going to do is read a book with a recipe or log onto a website and have total strangers tell you what they think is the best practice then don’t waste your time. A well run and effective GB program will out perform most BB programs. They are worth the effort. Just my opinion.
The key is having a mentor and having the time to use the tools. Far to many pay thousands of dollars and then never use the tools.
I disagree. Yes, you can create a 6-Sigma Green Belt in 5 days, and maybe even 3 days. There is no regulated international standard governing the requirements for any of the belts. Each organization that offers belt certification can develop their own core skills and duration for completing the training. There is no requirement to complete a project or even apply what you are taught in the class – which could simply be 3 days of lecture. While are several reputable organizations which certify belts, such as ASQ; ASQ is not recognized worldwide, and they are not an organization that controls the training beyond ASQ. However, if you are talking about effective green belt training and assessing the green belt has learned how to effectively use the methods and tools taught — No! it can’t be done in just 5 days. However, some people have been certified with as little as a 12-16-hour online self-paced class taken over a few days to 2 weeks and received a diploma for 6-Sigma Black Belt. for myself, I had to sit thru 6 months of weekly 1-day classes, and complete leading two 6-Sigma projects thru implementation and verification of effectiveness which took another 6 months and had to present a thesis type presentation on each project which in which I had to answer many questions to justify why I selected the project, why I used the methodology I used, the tools I used, and what I learned in the process to obtain my Lean 6-Signma Black Belt. So overall it took about a year and two projects to complete just my Black Belt.
Nice blog ….Really appreciable to improve in business management. it will help in business planning in future .Thanks for share…