|  BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Lean Six Sigma is fast becoming the process improvement toolkit of choice to help NZ businesses improve productivity, process quality and compress customer lead times. An anchor point role for deploying Lean Six Sigma is to train Green Belts who will become practitioners in process improvement methodology to fix problems and eliminate non value added activities.
 TARGET AUDIENCE
The Green Belt level is a Lean Six Sigma practitioner's course and enables participants to continue (from Yellow Belt) or start their process improvement journey. Typical target audiences are candidates from within a company or self employed that are looking to add lean and problem solving toolkits and roadmaps to their current skill-set to enable them to complete continuous improvement projects. Suitable candidates could come from all levels in an organisation depending on the focus for process improvement. The Green Belt course builds onto the one day Yellow Belt course offered by NZIM or can be taken as a separate standalone course.
 LEARNING OUTCOMES
Participants that complete both Part 1 and Part 2 will learn:
- The fundamentals of Lean and Six Sigma backed up with 'real world' project examples.
- How to navigate through projects using the two roadmaps Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC) and Define, Measure, Analyse, Design and Verify (DMADV).
- An in-depth understanding of the key DMAIC topics and tools to develop
♦ How to scope, manage using gate reviews and raise an effective project contract
♦ Cultural acceptance techniques to ensure the project has buy-in
♦ Customer high level needs
♦ Mapping techniques to record and propose improvements to the current state
♦ Data collection and verification of data sources methods
♦ Establishment of the current capability of the process
♦ How to identify sources of input variation
♦ Prioritising the key inputs and getting to the root cause
♦ Proposing of solutions and plans for their implementation
♦ Testing and verification of improvements
♦ Control features to quantify the improvements and sustain the gains
- An overview of how DMADV works using the Houses of Quality to develop and evaluate concepts
Full certification (NZIM is the authorising authority) to Green Belt level can be achieved incrementally by completing Part 1 training, lead a tool and complete a team project and then Part 2 training by leading an individual project and passing a multi-choice examination. Projects for both Part 1 and 2 need to demonstrate use of the roadmaps and tools.
Integral with the training is the belief that being 'technically' trained is only part of the capability required to be a Green Belt and hence the modules include training for engagement and the behavioural changes necessary to achieve cultural acceptance of the new process or project.
The style of the training uses accelerated learning techniques with hands-on, interactive coaching and lots of opportunity to practise the tools and progress individual projects. The emphasis is on training to become a practitioner to complete projects rather than just achieve an academic certificate.
Certified Green Belts are typically capable of helping mentor and support projects carried out by Yellow Belts.
 PROGRAMME STRUCTURE
The Lean Six Sigma Green Belt programme has three main tool kits; Leans, Variation Reduction (Six Sigma) and Design for Six Sigma.
The Lean and Six Sigma tools are blended into one roadmap using the DMAIC phases and are aimed at fixing broken processes (usually about 90% of situations) that are exhibiting defects, taking too long, are too complex, have too many hand-offs etc.
The Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) tool kit is targeted at new or heavily modified processes (10% of situations) where customer needs are used to develop a range of concepts for evaluation - this tool kit uses the industry standard DMADV roadmap and would have wide application with new process selection projects.
Headline summary of the Green Belt course:
9 day Green Belt course - covering a Lean Six Sigma fully blended version of DMAIC and overview course of Design for Six Sigma using the DMADV roadmap. This full Green Belt course is split into Part 1 and 2:
Part 1 is 5 full days. Day 1 is the Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt course (please contact NZIM Northern if you have already completed your Yellow Belt programme for an individual programme option). Part 1 Green Belt is a hands-on practitioner's course and is kept laptop free to concentrate on the application of the Lean Six Sigma roadmap and tools. It is very interactive with high use of post-its and flipcharts by the project teams to create engagement and a very visual route towards the process improvement solutions. The course expectation is that participants will bring with them a training project from their company or be prepared to buddy with another member's project. A number of these projects (not all) will be used to practise the training material on - so all candidates will join a class project team to progress a project through the training material. Candidates can certify as a Lean Six Sigma Practitioner after Part 1 providing the complete taking part in a project to completion and lead a tool. Further information will be provided on the course regarding this. Part 1 follows the full DMAIC roadmap and will equip members with a practical toolkit to complete any Lean Six Sigma project successfully.
Part 2 is 4 full days. Days 1 to 3 specialise on the analytical tools used with the Lean Six Sigma roadmap to enable members to advance their ability to problem solve, be more precise about locating the root cause and strengthen their understanding of standardisation necessary to sustain changes. Part 2 uses Minitab software to undertake the statistical analysis work required and members attending will be required to use a laptop. Day 4 provides an overview of Design for Six Sigma which is used to develop and evaluate new concept options for a project using the Houses of Quality DMADV roadmap. To certify as a full Green Belt at Part 2 will require completion of both Part 1 and Part 2 training and the leading of a second project and passing a multi-choice exam.
Follow-on Mentoring (optional + additional cost)
Support for Green Belts is often necessary as they start to engage with their projects and teams - this can take the form of 'Project Surgery's' at the NZIM office on Queen Street, site visits (for the whole group) or contact by phone/email. The mentoring is made up of the following:
- Four x two hour face to face coaching sessions or
- Eight x one hour teleconferences or
- A combination of the above up to a maximum of 8 hours coaching
- Plus unlimited telephone and email support for 12 months after Green Belt training
- Setting and marking the Part 2 exam
The Green Belt mentoring is $2,000 +GST. Should participants wish to include the mentoring option when booking please add this as a request in the "comments" section on the on-line booking form. Alternatively you are welcome to book this add-on prior to completing the Green Belt programme.
 IN-COMPANY OPTION
NZIM will partner with you to deliver a customised programme for your organisation. NZIM partner with some of New Zealand’s leading organisations, to deliver high quality learning programmes, designed to meet specific organisational needs.
Click here for August 2010 dates |
