Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Program

INTRODUCTION

Six Sigma is the comprehensive business improvement strategy made famous by organisations such as Motorola, General Electric, Honeywell and others, which has been used to generate significant improvements in business performance.

Lean, which is derived from the principles of the Toyota Production System focuses on waste reduction, maximisation of value and building a culture in which continuous improvement and excellence becomes everyone's responsibility. Combining Lean and Six Sigma provides a powerful methodology for embedding improvement and excellence into any organisation's core values.

Lean Six Sigma is increasingly being adopted world wide in all industries and in both the public and private sectors.

It is a disciplined process focused on delivering near perfect products and services. It is based on a structured methodology for continuous improvement, and can be used to improve any process in any business.

This GLOMACS Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Program introduces participants to all of the core concepts underpinning the Lean Six Sigma approach to excellence to the Green Belt level.

In Lean Six Sigma organisations, it is the Green Belts who lead and contribute to the majority of improvement teams undertaking the improvement projects that will make continuous improvement through Lean Six Sigma a key element of achieving and maintaining operational excellence.

This GLOMACS training program will be provided participants with the level of knowledge and skill required to achieve accreditation at the Green Belt level.

This GLOMACS Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Program is a full Green Belt program and assumes no prior knowledge or qualification in Lean Six Sigma. The Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt body-of-knowledge which is usually regarded as a pre-requisite for attendance at Green Belt level is included as part of this complete end-to-end Green Belt program.

Objectives

The objectives of this GLOMACS training program are to provide participants with a:

• Problem Solving using the DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control) process
• Process Improvement and Process Reengineering using the DMADV (Define-Measure-Analyse-Design-Validate) process
• Process Flow and Constraints Management (Balance and Flow) using the “Water Bucket” Method
• Thorough understanding of measurement and key data analysis technique aimed at understanding process performance, problem solving and root cause analysis
• Working knowledge of the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis Technique
• The “Wrestling with Jellyfish” methodology for dealing with intangible problems
• Statistical measurement and analysis techniques, including descriptive statistics, statistical distributions and hypothesis testing
• A complete coverable of all Lean methods and techniques

In particular, it is expected that participants completing the Green Belt Program will be able to successfully execute and implement projects using each of the methodologies covered in the program and be able to correctly decide which is the most appropriate methodology for each situation.

Participants completing this GLOMACS training program may elect to progress further in order to achieve the more advanced Black Belt accreditation.

Training Methodology

The Lean Six Sigma Green Belt program is a hands-on, stimulating learning experience.

This GLOMACS Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Program will be highly interactive, with opportunities to advance your opinions and ideas. Participation is encouraged in a supportive environment.

To ensure the concepts introduced during the program are understood, they will be reinforced through a mix of learning methods, including lecture style presentation, open discussion, case studies, simulations and group work.

The Green Belt program is delivered by way of a 10-day workshop, supported by a team based project showing the application of Lean Six Sigma Green Belt techniques to the workplace, upon completion of the workshop.

*Note: Some of the topics covered from day 6 onwards in this program will make use of the Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet software and the “Data Analysis Toolpak” add-in. Participants will need to bring laptops to the program with the “Toolpak” add-in installed and activated.

It has been our experience the learning value of the training experience is maximised if there are enough laptop computers available so that no more than two participants have to share a computer.

Organisational Impact

Organisations who expose participants to the training and development experience provided by this program will be contributing to building a core of knowledgeable and skilled staff who will be able to add value through their contributions as team members and team leaders for Lean Six Sigma improvement projects at an intermediate-to-advanced level.

In addition to being able to undertake more advanced projects themselves, Green Belts will be in position to lead, mentor and guide Yellow Belt Teams to ensure successful completion of projects.

Personal Impact

Becoming a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt is a tremendous personal development and potentially life changing experience.

Individuals attending this GLOMACS Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Program will gain knowledge and skills in key business and operational improvement methodologies, tools and techniques to an advanced level and significantly develop their measurement and data analysis skills. They will be able them to initiate, execute and deliver improvement projects for their organisations addressing a broad range of problems including addressing intangible issues.

They will also be able to contribute to the development of Lean Six Sigma implementation strategies.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

The Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Program introduces participants to concepts, methodologies, tools and techniques on which Lean Six Sigma is based to the Green Belt level.

The Lean Six Sigma Green Belts are an organisation’s improvement leaders and implementers. They bring to project teams a depth of business experience and technical expertise in Six Sigma methodology.

The Green Belt is the key contributor and driver of the continuous improvement process at the operational level. For most - bar the toughest projects - Green Belts are the team leaders and team members on Lean Six Sigma improvement teams.

Green Belts play major supportive roles to full-time Black Belts, doing much of the data gathering, leveraging upon business knowledge and contributing ideas to accelerate problem-solving within the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control) process.

The best candidates for Green Belt training are typically employees at any level who have an interest in improving the organisation. This can include:

• Senior Managers who may wish to participant in the occasional high level project and use their knowledge of Lean Six Sigma concepts, tools and techniques to improve their understanding of the business and improve their problem solving and decision making skills
• Middle Managers, Front Line Managers and Team Leaders who wish to define, lead and participate in improvement initiates;
• Operational level employees who are interested in improvement and in being involved in the process of improvement.

The Lean Six Sigma skills and knowledge acquired in this program are "generic" in nature and just as applicable to manufacturing, process or service industries. In fact, a key part of the learning occurs as a result of translating the concepts covered in the program to each individual organisation's specific context.

This GLOMACS training program challenges participants at a fundamental level to understand and managed their existing organisations as effectively and efficiently as possible given current constraints and equips them with the tools and methodologies to improve their organisations to achieve increasingly higher levels of performance.

Therefore, this GLOMACS Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Program will people working at levels of any type of organisation - public sector or private sector, manufacturing, process or services.

Program Review

The Lean Six Sigma Green Belt program is presented as single 10 day workshop and allows time after the workshop for participants to initiative their own workplace based Lean Six Sigma application projects.

The first 5 days of this GLOMACS Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Program covers the content usually associated with an advanced Yellow Belt level program and builds on this during the second 5 days to cover the full Green Belt level body-of-knowledge.

Participants should be in a position where they can undertake their own workplace based Lean Six Sigma improvement project upon completion of the 10-day workshop in order to consolidate and provide practical application of the learning.

Also addressed during the second workshop are an introduction to Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) based on the DMADV framework and various Lean Thinking based concepts that complement the core Lean Six Sigma body of knowledge and that will improve the effectiveness of Green Belts in their business improvement role.