MBA Journal August 2011

What To Expect From Black Belt Training And Certification

Six Sigma offers companies and the individuals in those companies not only knowledge of the philosophy and principles associated with the program but the support systems and tools they need to actually put the program into action. Someone who is a certified black belt in 6 Sigma is someone who is looking to strive for excellence and who has the leadership skills to model the basics that the other members of their team need to follow. These individuals not only understand their role in the company but the role of each individual in the process as well which helps them to effectively manage the team dynamics as well as to delegate responsibility.

Not everyone in your company is designed to be a Black Belt. While you may have many good employees most companies look toward the leaders in their company to take on such an important role and to undergo the Black Belt Certification Program.

Individuals assigned to these roles need to have a complete understanding of the DMAIC model and know how to incorporate the Six Sigma principles into that structure. Six Sigma Black Belt Certification programs help managers become more efficient and effective as this program helps them to better understand and oversee the Six Sigma projects that the company has before it. A person who is assigned to a Black Belt position will more often be in that position on a permanent basis at least for the duration of a few years ad then they will return to their prior job commitments.

Most Six Sigma projects are designed to save a company between one hundred and three hundred thousand dollars per year. The role of a certified black belt is to lead, coach, advise, manage, and help develop each employee at their own level to help the entire company meet its collaborative goal. In most instances coaching helps to get implementation off the ground and most companies find that with coaching and a little restructuring that they are able to turn Six Sigma to gold relatively quickly.

No matter what the industry that you are in Six Sigma is a structure that easily adapts from one type of business to the next. Any company that is looking for a faster track to success or any individual who is looking to propel their career to the next level should consider Six Sigma training and certification as an easy way to get a quick boost and get things moving in the right direction.

Your Business or Organization Can Profit From Six Sigma Certfication

The company does not exist that cannot benefit from the six sigma certification process. From the largest companies to the smallest, if a company makes a product or sells a service, six sigma should be a major part of their operational strategy. Many companies that have been practicing six sigma for ten years or more state that their organization would never be as productive, or have the highest quality, or the most satisfied customers, and employees with the best morale, if they did not embrace six sigma from the top down.

The questions asked by many executives who are not familiar with six sigma is what will it do for my company? The benefits of six sigma extend throughout every department of the company. Even the janitorial staff can benefit, as they have at one large manufacturing company by reducing material costs, utilizing better products at less cost, and finding ways to get the distasteful job done regularly and with high quality. If the morale of a janitorial staff can be greatly improved by six sigma, imagine the possibilities for the rest of the company.

Many operational plans have no, or little, impact on the forward progress of a company. The implementation of the Six Sigma process within a company structure will yield both measurable and immeasurable results; both are important value added features.

The following results will be noticeable:

• A significant Increase in customer loyalty through the delivery of better products will result in more satisfied customers. Satisfied customers are repeat customers.
• The bottom line will be increased because Six Sigma Certification will result in employee dedication to ensuring that efficient processes are working throughout the organization. This results in less resources being apportioned to correction processes and more towards quality production, meaning more products get to the customers with substantially less defects.
• Shareholder value rises. Improving revenues by developing greater customer satisfaction will result in a greater revenue flow, and the shareholder value rises accordingly
• Customer satisfaction. Your customers will receive what they pay for and at a higher value and a lower cost. Reducing process dissimilarity will result in fewer variations and higher quality.
• Increased employee satisfaction. Six Sigma Certification has proven to increase employee satisfaction and lower burnout.
• Customer satisfaction. Your customers will be pleased when they receive what they expected.

Six Sigma Implementation in Call Centers

There is simply no room for errors in any company especially in a dynamic industry such as the call centers. Call centers respond to real time issues either from individual customers or business to business clients. One mistake or error may lead to customer or client dissatisfaction, ruin the company's reputation, and could greatly affect the bottom line as well. With financial crisis hitting everyone like households, companies and countries alike, having a bad publicity is no longer an option.

The call center industry is one of the major key players in providing jobs and employment for billions of people worldwide. It is known to have saved a lot of countries in the west and even in Asia like India, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore from total economic downfall. The increasing number of call center companies worldwide provides support and service solutions to bigger companies and at the same time lower overall operations cost globally.

Stability and growth of call center industries are dependent on their capacity to meet unique and high standard service level agreements. Inability to meet the said agreement would mean losing contracts of internationally renowned clients, hundreds and thousands of seats or in the economic level would simply mean the rise of unemployment in the national level.

Therefore, keeping track of each employee's performance, evaluating if they meet or exceed the key performance indicators and rewarding top performers help ensure in keeping current clients and win other potential clients through good reputation built through satisfied customers. One of the best management strategies that can help ensure excellent performance is the implementation of Six Sigma in call center industries.

Six Sigma is a business management strategy which means 99.99966% defect free process output or having 3.4 defects per million outputs. This strategy was developed by Motorola, USA in 1986 and has since been used by many industries. Elimination of defects in processes does not only help improve quality but will also help decrease cost for companies.

Proper implementation of Six Sigma in call center industries will definitely help improve performance, ensure customer satisfaction, improve company's reputation, lower hiring, training and overall employment costs thereby maximizing the company's ability to gain profit. The need to do damage control to improve the company's reputation or do further marketing activities can be avoided as well. Finally, this strategy will provide stable and predictable process results allowing management to maximize its resources and giving room for growth and development as experienced by Honeywell, General Electric and most of Fortune 500 companies.

What is involved in six sigma certification

Six Sigma is the highest level of the Sigma’s and expected to maintain defect levels below 3.4 million probabilities. Certification involves an applicant to study and understand course information to use the techniques, and methods for Six Sigma quality improvement. The course studies are broken into four levels; Yellow, Green, Black and Master. Levels referred to as belts are assigned specific colors denoting the training completed. Advancement to higher levels must meet requirements. The training requests are usually driven by company, industry or professional association requirements for quality improvement.

The first levels, 6 sigma Yellow Belts have the basic knowledge of the Six Sigma processes for quality improvement to reach the company’s objectives. Yellow Belts are core participants handling small segments for process improvement or a subject expert for a precise process of a particular project. The Yellow level project may be elevated to a Green Belt level. Green Belts are project leaders developing methods to solve problems using statistical measurements to analyze, implement control and prevention of reoccurrence. Green Belts dedicate fifty percent of their time to a project. As the project develops, it moves forward to a Black Belt responsible for project execution working with the team coaching and designating individual responsibilities. Black Belts dedicate seventy-five percent of their time to a project, moving towards final approval from a Master Black Belt. Master Black Belt is typically the final signature for Six Sigma project deployment using higher levels of skills, advanced statistical analysis tools and project management.

Large companies may have internal training courses for Six Sigma or hire outside Six Sigma trainers, both require a certified Black Master Belts to deliver the instruction. Once the course studies are completed the applicant is required to take a written test with a passing grade for consideration of certification. Secondly the applicant needs to complete successfully an actual project applying the concepts learned in Six Sigma training. The courses are set up incrementally and have timelines attached to each Six Sigma Belt level with specific objectives to be completed. Costs include Minitab, a statistical software and training using the Six Sigma quality improvement processes. The costs can vary depending on the selected trainer.

• Six Sigma Training Programs
• Six Sigma Yellow Belt - two days
• Six Sigma Green Belt - two weeks plus two weeks working together with Black Belts.
• Six Sigma Black Belt - four weeks
• Six Sigma Master Black Belt - two weeks

Facts About Six Sigma Black Belts

When it comes to the business world, many corporations now require their top employees or all who work in the office to go through a training process known as Six Sigma. As far as the creme of the crop in Six Sigma certification, the black belt is those who have acquired and learned the most knowledge from the training program. A black belt who has graduated from this program will be found as a leader who uses skills everyday in order to help ensure that all employees involved in a company work together to formulate strategies that will make the corporation run at its optimal level.

It is important to note that those who have graduated as a black belt are expected to be capable of constructing and taking charge of team tasks and projects regularly. These individuals have been trained in order to use the DMADV method of design when it comes to creating new products and devices. As the Six Sigma training program believes, the black belts who have already received certification then continually continue to learn by training others who are in the lower levels. Black belts look after the lower levels by making sure that they are getting the proper training to reach black belt status some day. The lower belts include three levels: green, yellow, and white. Black belts work with all three levels and give attention to each who is seeking certification.

Black belts are expected to take charge and establish leadership when working with a team. It is often very beneficial for those in black-belt status to also have a grasp of psychology, human behavior characteristics, as well as change management. It is also essential for black belts to have excellent communication skills when dealing with peers and other employees.

All in all, reaching black belt certification is a great honor and the role should not be taken lightly. Ultimately the Six Sigma program has been designed by a company in order to help businesses run at optimal levels. When leadership is used properly and communication established, it is possible for all to work together in a sufficient manner. If you are interested in the Six Sigma program or would like to read more about Six Sigma black belts, simply type these keywords in a search engine for there are plenty of articles available on the subject. Get started earning your Six Sigma black belt today and become a better businessman.

Building A Successful Business From The Bottom Up

Many think that the key to running a successful business is to put in place the best possible management team. In essence, however, a successful business is really built from the bottom up and if you really are looking to run a successful business then you will want to make sure that you are selecting the lower level employees that serve as the best reflection for your business.

Management processes such as Six Sigma, for instance, acknowledge that the way to better profitability for a company is through improving the experience of their customers. In Six Sigma as it was first initiated this involved refining the products a company was making to allow the customer the best overall experience from a manufacturing perspective. As time has gone on customer service based businesses have become included in Six Sigma and in these businesses the product is considered the customer service and that is where having the correct employees on the front line dealing with your customers can truly enhance your customers’ experiences ten fold.

When it comes to making service related business decisions it is important that you first assess who it is you want representing your business and what qualities you think that your customers will be looking for. Will they want customer service representatives who are friendly and helpful, those who are knowledgeable, and efficient? Surely most businesses realize that those individuals that they are putting on their front line are at the very least equally important to if not more important than the managers that are leading them.

Your management team is a very important aspect of your business but their job is enhanced and made much simpler when they are in fact managing a productive team of customer based employees who will go above and beyond to get the job done at any cost. When you look carefully at the different ways you can manage a company you must note that companies that build their business from the bottom up tend to have better overall customer service and better results then companies that work in reverse.

No matter what management process you select just be sure to keep in mind the fact that building a business is a team effort and when building a team you want to make sure that you have employees who excel at their position at every level of the company. And ideally you would have only employees that excel and exceed your expectations throughout your entire company.

Getting Your Six Sigma Implementation Right The First Time

Six Sigma is something that many businesses are using in a variety of different marketplaces to help them attain a higher level of both success and profits. When it comes to this management process, most companies struggle at first to attain success and this is not due to flaws within the system itself but rather in the process of implementation.

Even the best tools must be used correctly if they are to obtain the desired result and 6 Sigma is no different. Most companies work hard to facilitate proper training of employees and make sure that they put in place a coaching staff for the beginning of the implementation process. Each company will have its own needs regarding the amount of time that it will need coaching to get the process implemented correctly and fortunately those companies that begin with coaching from the start find it easier to iron out the kinks in the process in a timelier manner.

The truth is while this method of implementation may wind up costing a company a little bit more it will also help to expedite Six Sigma results which will help improve a company’s bottom line more quickly. Increasing profitability is what Six Sigma is truly all about and this is why so many companies are training and implementing it but the success really relies on getting it implemented correctly.

Without structured implementation and coaching a company may begin to doubt the benefits of 6 Sigma and may even over time give it a bad name. After all, if you don’t know how to use something it will be difficult to make it profitable to your business.

One of the biggest problems that companies who implement the program without coaching face is the fact that initially the process may seem to work and may even increase the company’s bottom line but over time it may begin to disintegrate. These false results tend to make companies think that they are on the right track with their implementation only to hit a stumbling block a little further down the line.

It is best for companies to spend a little bit extra time and money to make sure they get the implementation process right the first time. In the long run this can save quite a bit of money and time as well as many headaches down the road. Don’t be fooled by false results, coaching can help ensure you get it right to help achieve lasting, long term results.

The Reasons Why Top Companies Are Turning To Six Sigma

Ultimately each company finds themselves turning to Six Sigma for a variety of different reasons. There are many ways in which this program can benefit businesses in a variety of different industries but the following are just a few of the aspects of Six Sigma that make it stand out above the rest.

1. TEAMWORK – As anyone in business will tell you if you want your business to succeed then it is important to make sure that you have everyone working together for a common goal. Six Sigma is a process by which everyone becomes involved on the level that they impact the company and no one in 6 Sigma is more or less important then the next person. It is a process by which everyone has input and this tends to make it more effective across the board.

2. CUSTOMERS – A business is only effective when its customers are happy ones. No matter who your product or service is directed at that person needs to be happy with what you are producing. Since 6 Sigma focuses on the end result and the customer experience it is very focused on this aspect of business, which is very important to the success, or failure of a company.

3. TRAINING – Another reason why this methodology is so wonderful and effective is because it offers your entire staff a comprehensive training program. In many management-training programs, only the managers receive training and then they pass it along to everyone else. In 6 Sigma, there are training programs available to those employees on all levels and classes are available in the classroom or online for those employees who can’t afford the time away from the workplace.

4. REFINEMENT – By far one of the biggest aspects of Six Sigma that makes it stand out from the rest is the way in which the results are carefully analyzed and refined as the company moves forward. There is not a long wait period between implementation and assessment and this allows for changes to propel the company forward in an expedited manner.

5. STATISTICS – Many companies find the statistics to be challenging to manage at first but once they begin to truly understand the basics of this form of analysis it becomes much simpler for them to get a handle on. Over time most companies begin to love this process because it helps them find answers to their problems and to further improve the results of their actions and ultimately the bottom line.