What Should be in a Six Sigma Black Belt Curriculum?

Six Sigma Black Belts often shoulder responsibility for Six Sigma projects. Managing and driving process improvement, while also deferring to Master Black Belts, Black Belts navigate a difficult hierarchy. But what knowledge and skills form the basis of your Black Belt curriculum?

Six Sigma Black Belt Curriculum

Our Six Sigma Black Belt course is a direct continuation of our Green Belt course. On top of the Green Belt’s requisite two weeks, an additional 3^rd and 4^th weeks focus on Black Belt training. Furthermore, our Black Belt curriculum is based on the DMAIC structure, focussing on Analyze, Improve, and Control:

Design

The first stage of DMAIC involves setting project goals and customer deliverables. Additionally, project planning and deliverables are other essential components of Six Sigma, for which your MBB course leader will provide review and support.

1. Project Management. Black Belts are leaders and should know how to deploy changes smoothly. Moreover, all our course leaders are certified Master Black Belts with a wealth of real-world project experience to impart. Our MBBs also provide support and consultation each week.
2. Charter a Project Team. When chartering a project team, Black Belts need to ensure all team members have value to add. If not, that would go against Six Sigma! Similarly, when drawing up your project charter, we can provide useful all-purpose models, alongside with basic project examples.

Measure

1. The second stage of DMAIC requires you to measure your processes to quantify the problem and determine performance.
2.  Process Mapping. Black Belts should be able to draw a clear picture of how business processes function and are interconnected. SixSigmaUS will also provide you with useful templates and data files to aid your project work.
3. Calculate business sigma level. Learning to define and measure opportunities, defects, and to calculate yield, in training will help Black Belts in practice.

Analyze

The third stage of DMAIC involves analysis of the root causes of variation, as well as how to prevent the same changes from returning.

1. Define performance goals. Establishing performance goals will allow Black Belts to pitch the necessity of a Six Sigma project to company executives. Furthermore, it will enable you to manage deployment effectively.
2. Identify root causes of problems. Black Belts should be trained in Root Cause Analysis to identify production issues. RCA will also allow you to develop innovative solutions to specific issues.

Improve

The fourth stage of DMAIC is where process improvement eliminates defect.

1. Design of Experiments. With a working knowledge of Design of Experiments, Black Belts can then find cause-and-effect relationships between process factors and outputs. We will also provide you with a reference manual for DoE, and a trial version of the Design Experiment program. Furthermore, additional instruction in Six Sigma software like Minitab software will be provided, with MINITAB macros to help simplify your work and improve graphics quality.
2. Developing and Implementing solutions. It’s one thing to theorize a creative solution, but another to implement it successfully. Moreover, if Black Belts don’t understand the mechanics of change deployment, then your project will not progress.

Control

The fifth and final stage of DMAIC seeks to regulate performance and drive future successes. At the end of the course, once your project undergoes certification review, you will receive your certificate.

1. Developing process standards and procedures. Processes should also be standardized to ensure variation does not occur.
2. Developing a transfer plan. Black Belts handle Six Sigma implementation while also working with their clients. But it’s up to Black Belts to hand over responsibility when the time comes.

Additional Black Belt Curriculum Contents: Week 3 

Additional Black Belt Curriculum Contents: Week 4