Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Curriculum

Performance Criteria: Understand leadership responsibilities in the deployment of Six Sigma, including providing resources, managing change, and communicating ideas.

• Describe the responsibilities of executive leaders and how they affect the deployment of Six Sigma in terms of allocating resources, managing change, and communicating the vision.
• Explain how leadership commitment influences project selection, prioritization, and sustained focus.
• Describe and use various techniques for facilitating and managing organizational change.

Performance Criteria: Describe and identify organizational roadblocks including lack of resources, lack of management support, and the need for recovery and change management techniques.

• Describe the impact an organization’s culture and inherent structure can have on the success of Six Sigma.
• Explain how deployment failures can result from lack of resources, lack of management support, unclear priorities, or conflicting initiatives.
• Identify and apply various techniques to overcome these barriers, including escalation, stakeholder alignment, and targeted communication.

Performance Criteria: Use team formation theories to address team types and constraints, team roles, team member selection, and launching teams effectively.

• Describe different team types and constraints, and select appropriate structures for Six Sigma projects.
• Define and assign team roles to support effective project execution.
• Select team members based on skills, influence, and stakeholder representation.
• Describe and apply techniques that motivate team members and sustain their participation and commitment.
• Facilitate the team through the classic stages of development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.

Performance Criteria: Define benchmarking approaches and key business and financial measures including best practice, competitive, and collaborative benchmarking, scorecards, KPIs, cost of quality, ROI, and NPV.

• Define and distinguish between various types of benchmarking, including best practice, competitive, and collaborative benchmarking.
• Define business performance measures such as balanced scorecards, key performance indicators, and the financial impact of customer loyalty.
• Define financial measures including revenue growth, market share, margin, cost of quality (COQ), net present value (NPV), return on investment (ROI), and cost-benefit analysis.

Performance Criteria: Utilize time management techniques to keep team meetings and project activities focused and efficient.

• Employ time management techniques including publishing agendas with time limits on each entry.
• Adhere to the agenda and avoid unnecessary digressions.
• Require pre-work by attendees where appropriate.
• Ensure that the right people and resources are available for project meetings and decisions.

Performance Criteria: Understand, select, and apply management and planning tools for structuring complex problems.

• Define, select, and apply tools such as affinity diagrams, tree diagrams, and process decision program charts (PDPC).
• Use matrix diagrams, interrelationship diagrams, and prioritization matrices to structure and prioritize issues.
• Use activity network diagrams to plan and visualize project tasks and dependencies.

Performance Criteria: Collect customer data using surveys, focus groups, interviews, and observations.

• Use various methods to collect customer feedback, including surveys, focus groups, interviews, and direct observations.
• Identify key elements that make these data collection tools effective and credible.
• Ensure that customer voice is captured in a way that can inform project goals and measures.

Performance Criteria: Understand team facilitation including team motivation, team stages, communication, and dynamics.

• Identify and use appropriate communication methods within the team and with stakeholders to report progress and conduct milestone reviews.
• Support the overall success of the project through clear communication and alignment.
• Identify and use techniques such as coaching, mentoring, and intervention to address group dynamic challenges.
• Handle issues such as dominant or reluctant participants, feuding, unproductive disagreement, unquestioned acceptance of opinions as facts, groupthink, floundering, rushing to finish, and digressions or tangents.

Performance Criteria: Define and use team performance evaluation and reward mechanisms.

• Measure team progress in relation to goals, objectives, and other metrics that support team success.
• Recognize and reward the team for its accomplishments to reinforce desired behaviors.

Performance Criteria: Analyze customer data using graphical, statistical, and qualitative tools.

• Use graphical, statistical, and qualitative tools to analyze customer feedback.
• Assist in translating customer feedback into project goals, critical to quality (CTQ) attributes, and requirements statements.

Performance Criteria: Identify resistance to change and factors that support or hinder change.

• Conduct an analysis to identify restraining and driving forces related to change.
• Recognize patterns of resistance and their impact on project implementation.

Performance Criteria: Implement plans that address identified resistance to change.

• Outline steps taken to address issues identified in change analysis.
• Discuss and apply stakeholder management approaches.
• Develop and implement communication plans that support change.
• Assess and improve organizational readiness for change.

Performance Criteria: Identify customers and classify them appropriately.

• Identify internal and external customers relevant to a project.
• Classify customers and stakeholders based on their role and impact.
• Show how projects impact different customer groups and their requirements.

Performance Criteria: Outline process elements including components and boundaries.

• Define and describe process components and boundaries.
• Recognize how processes span various functional areas and the challenges this creates for process improvement.

Performance Criteria: Identify process owners, suppliers, internal customers, external customers, and other stakeholders.

• Identify process owners and their responsibilities.
• Identify suppliers, internal customers, and external customers for the process.
• Map stakeholders and their interests in the project.

Performance Criteria: Analyze customer data using graphical, statistical, and qualitative tools and translate requirements into performance measures.

• Use voice of the customer analysis tools such as quality function deployment (QFD).
• Translate customer requirements into measurable performance indicators.

Performance Criteria: Outline the project charter and project statement including key project elements and problem statement.

• Define and describe elements of a project charter.
• Develop a clear problem statement including baseline performance and improvement goals.

Performance Criteria: Develop project definition and scope using appropriate tools.

• Develop project definition and scope using Pareto charts to focus on vital few issues.
• Use process maps to clarify boundaries, handoffs, and key steps within the scope.

Performance Criteria: Develop primary, consequential, and key project metrics that align with the voice of the customer.

• Develop primary and consequential metrics such as quality, cycle time, and cost.
• Establish key project metrics that relate to customer requirements and business objectives.

Performance Criteria: Apply project planning tools to structure and schedule work.

• Use project tools such as Gantt charts, critical path method (CPM), and program evaluation and review technique (PERT) charts.
• Use activity network diagrams to visualize dependencies and critical paths.

Performance Criteria: Record project documentation effectively using appropriate formats.

• Provide input to project documentation in formats such as spreadsheets and storyboards.
• Select the appropriate vehicle for presenting project documentation at phase reviews and management reviews.

Performance Criteria: Define and utilize project risk analysis in terms of purpose, benefits, and impacts.

• Describe the purpose and benefits of project risk analysis.
• Explain how risk analysis considers resources, financials, and impacts on customers and other stakeholders.

Performance Criteria: Define project milestones, compare objectives with outcomes, and capture lessons learned and opportunities.

• Describe the objectives achieved through the project to date.
• Apply lessons learned to identify additional opportunities for improvement.
• Present findings in a clear and concise manner for stakeholders.

Performance Criteria: Define, select, and use management planning tools to support Define phase decisions.

• Define and use affinity diagrams, interrelationship digraphs, and tree diagrams.
• Apply prioritization matrices and matrix diagrams to compare options.
• Use PDPC charts and activity network diagrams for planning and risk mitigation.

Performance Criteria: Calculate and interpret process performance metrics.

• Calculate defects per unit (DPU), rolled throughput yield (RTY), cost of poor quality (COPQ), and defects per million opportunities (DPMO).
• Determine sigma levels and process capability indices.
• Track process performance measures to drive project decisions.

Performance Criteria: Conduct Define tollgate reviews and present findings.

• Present findings of the Define stage in a structured and concise manner.
• Demonstrate readiness to move to the Measure phase based on agreed tollgate criteria.

Performance Criteria: Define and describe measurement and metrology concepts including continuous and discrete data, calibration, and traceability to standards.

• Define measurement methods for both continuous and discrete data.
• Define and describe elements of metrology including calibration systems and traceability to reference standards.
• Explain the control and integrity of standards and measurement devices.

Performance Criteria: Identify how measurement systems are used in different functional areas of the enterprise.

• Identify how measurement systems can be applied in marketing, sales, engineering, research and development, supply chain management, customer satisfaction, and other functional areas.

Performance Criteria: Describe and apply basic probability concepts such as independence, mutually exclusive events, and multiplication rules.

• Explain independence and mutual exclusivity in the context of process data.
• Apply multiplication rules and other basic probability concepts in analysis and risk assessment.

Performance Criteria: Implement and interpret measurement systems analysis tools.

• Calculate, analyze, and interpret measurement system capability using repeatability and reproducibility (GRR).
• Evaluate measurement correlation, bias, and linearity.
• Assess percent agreement and precision-to-tolerance (P/T) ratios.

Performance Criteria: Use appropriate software tools for advanced analysis and project completion.

• Understand advanced techniques for analysis using statistical and other data analysis software.
• Leverage software outputs to support data-based decision making in projects.

Performance Criteria: Conduct Measure tollgate reviews and present findings.

• Present findings of the Measure phase in a concise manner.
• Demonstrate that measurement systems and baseline performance are well understood before proceeding to Analyze.

Performance Criteria: Undertake hypothesis testing, including tests for means, variances, proportions, paired comparisons, one-way ANOVA, and chi-square.

• Define and distinguish between statistical and practical significance.
• Apply tests considering significance level, power, type I errors, and type II errors.
• Determine appropriate sample size for various hypothesis tests.
• Define and describe paired-comparison parametric hypothesis tests.
• Define terms related to one-way analysis of variance and interpret ANOVA results and data plots.
• Define and interpret chi-square tests and use them to determine statistical significance.

Performance Criteria: Select and use contingency tables to assess relationships between categorical variables.

• Select, develop, and use contingency tables to determine statistical significance of associations.

Performance Criteria: Demonstrate the ability to recognize and handle non-normal data.

• Recognize non-normal data and understand when parametric assumptions are violated.
• Select, develop, and use non-parametric tests including Mood’s Median, Levene’s test, Kruskal–Wallis, Mann–Whitney, and others as appropriate.

Performance Criteria: Use tools and techniques to analyze data and identify gaps, root causes, and waste.

• Use gap analysis, scenario planning, and other tools to compare current and future states against predefined metrics.
• Define and describe the purpose of root cause analysis and the challenges in identifying true root causes.
• Use tools such as the 5 Whys, Pareto charts, fault tree analysis, and cause-and-effect diagrams to resolve chronic problems.
• Identify the seven classic wastes (overproduction, inventory, defects, overprocessing, waiting, motion, and transportation) and other forms of waste such as resource under-utilization.

Performance Criteria: Conduct Analyze tollgate reviews and present findings clearly.

• Present findings of the Analyze phase in a concise manner.
• Demonstrate that root causes are validated and prioritized before moving to Improve.

Performance Criteria: Define and describe DOE concepts, main effects, design principles, and apply one-factor, fractional factorial, and full factorial designs.

• Define basic DOE terms such as independent and dependent variables, factors and levels, response, treatment, error, repetition, and replication.
• Interpret main effects and interaction plots to understand factor impacts.
• Apply design principles including power and sample size, balance, repetition, replication, run order, efficiency, randomization, blocking, interaction, confounding, and resolution.
• Plan, organize, and evaluate experiments by determining objectives, selecting factors, responses, and measurement methods, and choosing appropriate designs.
• Design and conduct completely randomized, randomized block, and Latin square designs and evaluate their results.
• Design, analyze, and interpret two-level fractional factorial experiments and describe how confounding affects their use.
• Design, conduct, and analyze full factorial experiments for deeper process understanding.

Performance Criteria: Select and apply tools for waste elimination, cycle-time reduction, kaizen events, and risk analysis.

• Select and apply tools and techniques for eliminating or preventing waste, including pull systems, kanban, 5S, standard work, and poka-yoke.
• Use tools and techniques for reducing cycle time, including continuous flow and single-minute exchange of die (SMED).
• Define and distinguish between kaizen and kaizen blitz and apply them appropriately.
• Use tools such as feasibility studies, SWOT analysis, PEST analysis, and consequential metrics to analyze and mitigate risk associated with improvement options.

Performance Criteria: Develop plans for implementing improved processes, including pilots and simulations.

• Develop plans for implementing improved processes using pilot tests and simulations where appropriate.
• Evaluate results from pilots and simulations to select the optimum solution for full-scale implementation.