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An Efficient Certificate: My Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Certification

continuous quality improvement consultant business management consultant

Jillian Regan, consultant at Rillian holding her Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification from the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Photo © Jillian Regan 2018.

I recently got my Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) through an online course offered by TUM on the edX platform. I admire how the certificate itself and the process of obtaining it was highly efficient, exemplifying the ideas of Lean and Six Sigma, reducing waste and reducing variation in quality improvement.

Lean and Six Sigma are two separate, but related philosophies in the quality improvement and management realm across a variety of different industries. I was first introduced to the concept in the healthcare industry and in the field of public health.

Wanting to further my knowledge and be able to better apply the data and fact driven quality improvement Lean and Six Sigma tools to improve my performance and range of services offered as a consultant, I decided to get certified in Lean and Six Sigma.

I found that an online series of three courses offered by TUM through the edX platform was the most efficient and cost effective way to gain this certification. Online courses allowed me to work my continuing education around my work schedule. Also the cost was low enough to not waste or strain the resources of a fresh, innovative, new consulting agency for providing professional growth and development for its consultants. 

I also thought it would be interesting to take online courses from a German university, TUM, with professors from backgrounds in industries, such as manufacturing, that I am not experienced in as I learned of Lean and Six Sigma from a public health and healthcare background, thus providing a different perspective.

Today Lean and Six Sigma are often combined, and I wanted to be able to provide the combined effect that has been shown to reduce costs, improve customer, client or other stakeholder satisfaction with quality control and continuous quality improvement in processes, services, or products in the projects I work on.

Though they are often combined, Lean and Six Sigma are two separate, but related philosophies. It can be useful to differentiate between the two.

Lean focuses on reducing waste while Six Sigma focus on reducing variation, such as variation in a process, product, or service that is out of specification. Variations are often considered to be errors or mistakes, depending on how far out of specification the variation is and how the variation affects the process, service, or product. 

My Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification from TUM efficiently lists out and differentiates which topics covered in the series of certification courses I took fall under each umbrella: Lean or Six Sigma. Most professional continuing education certificates do not include such detail, which causes wastes in time or an increased risk of error in understanding what topics were included in the course(s) that the certification was obtained through. The listing out of the topics on my Yellow Belt certificate allows me to easily, efficiently, and with a reduced chance of errors in listing the topic under the wrong umbrella, list them out in the table below if you are curious to learn which umbrella each topic falls under.

Differences between Topics in Lean vs Six Sigma at the Yellow Belt Level

Lean
Six Sigma
Continuous Improvement (Kaizen) DMAIC = Define Measure Analyze Improve Control
 8D Problem Soloving SIPOC
 Value Stream Mapping Process Mapping/Flow Diagram
3 Ms: Mura, Muri, Muda Probability Distributions
Poka Yoke Solutions Descriptive Statistics
Visual Management Plots (Pareto, Scatter, Time Series)
Workplace Organization Process Capability: Yield, ppm, DPMO, Sigma Level
Capacity Analysis, Little’s Law  Inductive Statistics: Confidence Intervals, Hypothesis Tests
 Queuing Theory Linear Regression / ANOVA 
Setups and Batches DOE
Mixed Model Production Failure Mode and Effect Analysis
JIT/Pull Systems SPC, Control Charts
Scheduling Pull Systems Control and Response Plan
Kanban Design for Six Sigma
Total Productive Maintenance Tolerance Design
Single Minute Exchange of Die Project Identification and Definition
Overall Equipment Effectiveness  Critical-to-Quality Parameters, Customer Expectations, VOC, Kano

It has taken a longer than expected amount of time to post about getting Lean Six Sigma certified consultant becoming certified at the Yellow Belt level because I have been busy getting Jill + Ian’s bicycle rental service started — a service that Rillian provided research and development for and is now being added as a service provided by of our affiliated businesses, Jill + Ian–and applying Lean Six Sigma principles to the service from the start to improve access to bicycles through a quality focused and innovative bicycle rental service.

However, due to the application of Lean and Six Sigma principles in my photography business, Jillian Regan Photography, LLC, I was able to quickly and efficiently add photos to complement this blog post.

Jillian Regan, consultant at Rillian, has been very busy getting Jill + Ian’s bicycle rental service started–a service that Rillian provided research and development services for–and only just now had time to pose for a photo with her Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Certificate and her bicycle. Her bicycle is available for rent through Jill + Ian’s Bicycle Rentals. Photo © Jillian Regan 2018.

Conclusion

Getting my Lean Six Sigma Yellow belt certification from TUM through the edX platform was an efficient way to improve my performance as a consultant and be able to better offer data driven quality improvement technical assistance and support and consulting to other organizations.

The certificate itself is created to reduce waste and variation by efficiently listing out the topics covered under Six Sigma and Lean and details not normally included on a professional continuing education certificate itself for easy and efficient access and comprehension. 

 

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Systems and Software for Six Sigma Projects: Review of SixSigma Guide Software

Six Sigma is a quality improvement methodology that organizations in many different fields utilize to improve their organization’s processes and performance.

A systematic way for keeping track of Six Sigma projects is essential to being able to effectively use Six Sigma to improve the processes and performance of the organization. It is also important that this system is standardized throughout the organization and that all employees who will be using it are trained on how to correctly use it.

A good system will include a way to decide if the problem identified is enough a problem to be addressed in a Six Sigma project, before proceeding to conducting a Six Sigma project. In addition there should be a way to track both the impact of the problem and solution on the customer (voice of the customer) as well as on the business (voice of the business). It is important to document attributes of the data that is to be collected, such as if it is ordinal scale or nominal scale, to make it easier to keep track of which types of statistical analysis are appropriate to apply to the data.

One way to have a good system for Six Sigma projects could be to use a software program specifically designed for this, such as SixSigma Guide. SixSigma Guide is a software guide designed specifically for Six Sigma Projects.

quality improvement strategic planning

The homepage for SoftLogic, with SixSigma guide on the far right and two other software programs on the left and middle.

About SixSigma Guide:

  • It was created by Dr. Reiner Hutwelker
    • He is a business consultant,
    • Master Black Belt in Six Sigma,
    • and an adjunct professor at Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften München and Management Center Innsbruck in Eresing, Germany.
  • More details about the software can be found here (orginal website is in German-will need to have your browser translate it): http://www.softlogik.de/p_sigmaGuide_description_de.html
  • There is a trial version of this software available at http://www.softlogik.de/p_service_download_de.html
  • Note: this software tool does not provide the statistical analytic capabilities needed in most Six Sigma projects, so a statistical software program like R, SAS, Minitab, or Stata can be used for statistical analysis of the data in conjunction with this software tool

Review of SixSigma Guide:

  • This software is a useful and practical tool, although it may not be the right fit for every organization. It was clearly developed by a Master Black Belt in Six Sigma who used his many years of practical experience in conducting Six Sigma projects as well as in educating future Six Sigma quality improvement professionals. This software is relatively easy to learn how to use for people who are familiar with other software like Microsoft Excel. One of the best things about it is that it walks the user, step by step through the whole Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) cycle. Instead of having all these steps and sub-steps saved in different spreadsheets in folders on a shared drive, with this software, everything can be kept track of in one place.
  • While it is functional and relatively user friendly, I feel that in order to be more marketable the design of the user interface might need to be enhanced. While it is perfectly functional, people have become used to seeing beautifully designed software programs. Large organizations may also wish to be able to customize it with their logos and branding when implementing it across the organization.
quality improvement

A screenshot of the download page to download the SixSigma Guide software. The option to download the free trial is listed first. Both English and German slides with examples of using the software for a Six Sigma project are linked below the download link.

Another way could be to use a combination of different types of software the organization is currently using, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Docs, combined with a file sharing system, such as a server or cloud based storage solution, such as DropBox, so that all stakeholders who need access to the projects can easily access it.

Whichever systems and software you choose to use, it is essential that it there is a systematic and standardized way of conducting and keeping track of Six Sigma projects across your organization.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Have you used SixSigma Guide software or a similar software for Six Sigma projects? What do you think about it?

Disclaimer: This is an independent review of software, I am not sponsored in anyway by any of the software companies or individuals listed or reviewed in this article. None of the links are affiliate links. I am just sharing my thoughts about software that could be useful for Six Sigma projects. I learned of this software while taking an online course on Six Sigma, from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany and edX.org, in which Dr. Hutwelker was a guest lecturer.

Jillian Regan, MPH is a consultant at Rillian. She enjoys quality improvement using data to improve processes within the organization, so that the organization can better serve its clients, customers, patients, or others. Connect with her by email at Jillian.Regan@RillianConsulting.com or Twitter (@JillianReganMPH) or LinkedIn.

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