Green Belt Course
Syllabus & Book of Knowledge

0.1: An introduction to the Course

0.2: Benefits of Lean Six Sigma

0.3: Green Belt Projects

1.1: What is Lean

To understand how to build Lean processes, we must understand what Lean means and how we can apply lean across what we do to drive a difference. We will explore what Lean is, what it is not, and where Lean fits within the current business climate.

1.2: What are the keen Lean Principles?

The principles behind Lean are fundamental to core fundamentals for business excellence and building operational excellence. Every industry has a way of doing business, but the principles behind Lean are relevant across all sectors, helping build the long-term growth and culture of an organisation.

1.3: How to identify wastes and inefficiencies in our processes

Learning to see inefficiencies does not start when something obvious goes wrong. As an expert in Lean thinking, you will be able to watch processes, understand the inefficiencies, and identify waste within every process. With most processes having almost 80% waste, we cannot afford to ignore it.

1.4: How to be process centered in our thinking

To build new products or services and fix existing ones, you have to be processed-centered and processed-focused. Learning the art of process thinking to build improved or new processes is a skill that can be developed by leveraging the Lean principles.

1.5: Core Lean Tool Kit

Understanding what tool to use, when and which tool will begin with the best and most significant result is critical to making lasting change happen. You will learn the critical Lean tools such as the Value Stream Mapping or 5S, but you will also learn how to get good at brainstorming, SCAMPER, Assumption busting, and prioritization of activities while developing skills that can be applied across any business and any role.

1.6: Using A3 Problem Solving

Toyota taught its leaders how to solve issues on a single sheet of A3 paper, and we will show you how to do it. This tool brings together visual management, change management and problem solving into an unbelievably powerful problem-solving format that you can use for the rest of your career to solve business challenges – at any level.

2.1 What is Six Sigma?

So what does Six Sigma mean? In this module, we will explore the background of six sigma, where it came from and what it means to business today. Finally, we will examine the impact of poor sigma levels in business operations and how the six sigma approach can enable world-class performance.

2.2 What is the difference between Lean & Six Sigma

With so much talk about Lean and Six Sigma, consultants, businesses, and leaders are often one or the other. But why is that? And should it be the case?

2.3 Introduction to the DMAIC Problem Solving approach

The DMAIC methodology (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control) phases are central to the Six Sigma project approach, and we will show you how DMAIC, and DMADV, can provide a structure to solve almost any project you will ever work on. So if you are ever lost in your project and what to do next, the approach we will show you and teach you helps you walk your way through any project, keeping it well structured so that you can be creative.

03: The Define Stage

Have you ever identified a project to work on but found it hard to keep the project on track and within scope? Have you ever worked on a project where senior management are just not supportive or interested? Well in the define phase, we are going to show you how to build projects that the business wants to do, needs to do and support you to do.

We will look at the following elements:

1. Building Problem/Goal Statements
2. Learning how to quantify the cost of poor quality in your business/operations
3. Understanding customers and linking projects to burning customer needs
4. How to align teams behind projects including stakeholders
5. What makes teams successful and how to build the right team with the right structures
6. Getting business approval and support

04: The Measure Phase

Ever got to the end of a project and had difficult to prove it was a success? Even heard about a project someone says they did, but you are just not sure if anything actually improved? More often than not, this is because they jumped, skipped or just simply did not know about the measure phase. If you want to improve something, you have to learn how to baseline performance.

In the measure phase we look at how we should identify the data we need, how to capture and extract that data and ensure its quality before applying tools to build high quality performance metrics and KPI’s. We will look at the different measures you can use to baseline performance so you can prove how good performance was before you started.

We will cover key topics such as:

1. How to build KPIs and cascade them across teams and projects
2. How to use basic statistics to offer more insights and depth into your data
3. What you need to do to ensure the data you capture is quality data and not bias
4. The different types of data and why some types of data are better than us
5. Skills to learn how to interpret data, the distributions and which tools can be used to deliver insights
6. We will look at how to use graphical analysis tools to represent data clearly
7. How to understand if you process is actually capable of what you need
8. And finally, how to translate this into baseline metrics, a foundation for success

05: An Introduction to Basic Statistics 

Ever get lost or confused when people talk about statistics? Well this short module is to help simplify the statistics, the jargon and help us learn how to sensible statistics in the real world. It will break down the concepts so you can feel confident presenting data and using data to challenge business processes.

06: The Analyse Stage

Have you ever seen a project team implement a solution that actually has zero impact on the problem? Or teams that say they have fixed the issue but then the same issue happens over and over again? In the Analyse phase we are going to show you how to make sure this does not happen to you. How? Because of the way we use people’s experience, process thinking and data analysis to identify the right “root cause” that is worth solving.

We will look at the following elements:

1. How to analyse processes for improvements using Value Stream Mapping, Process Mapping, Flow/Pull
2. How to identify critical bottlnecks in your operations
3. Root Cause Analysis tools such as 5 Whys, Pareto, Fishbone
4. How to manage risks using the FMEA tool
5. When to use Graphical Analysis to represent key process issues
6. What is Confidence intervals and hypothesis testing
7. What is the benefit of regression analysis and how to use it
8. And finally, how to priortise your root causes.

07: The Improve Stage

What is the right way to test solutions and how to build a pilot? How do I get the team involved to generate improvement ideas and then how do I know which ones to do first? These are some of the questions we will answer as we explore idea generation through to running successful pilots and implementing solutions.

We will look at the following elements:

1. How to avoid going with the first idea and generate lots of potential improvement ideas
2. How to asses ideas against each other to identify the best fit
3. What is Just In Time and how does it support business improvement
4. Know how to understand risks of your proposed solution and build in countermeasures early on
5. When to use 5S, SOP’s and Visual Management to support improvements and changes
6. What are successful pilots and how to run them
7. Learn how to use the Lean Startup approach to be more innovative and drive innovation

08: The Control Phase

The risk with all changes is that over time, teams resort back to what they did before. So how do you overcome this and how do you ensure that the changes made stay implemented. In the control phase we look at how to not only ensure long term sustainability but also how to close out your project, sign off the benefits and get ready to celebrate with your team.

We will look at the following elements:

1. Using ongoing measures to maintain your solution
2. Building KPI’s and charts to monitor performance in a sustainable way
3. What makes change successful and tools and techniques for driving daily progress
4. How to quantify the change and gain the financial accumum to measure benefits the right way
5. Finally, how to close out project, delivery report outs and ensure you celebrate!

09.1: Change Management

No project has ever succeeded without making people change as well. Change is not that easy as you know. This module is designed to look at some of the industry best practises on how to make change happen and then what to do to build the culture change required in our businesses today.

We will cover topics such as:

1. What is change management and how does it impact companies
2. How to build high performing teams
3. Key skills required to manage change and understand the change curve people go through
4. When to be directive or supportive in your management style
5. What is the role of a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt when it comes to managing change and projects
6. How to build the foundation of change and make sure you cast the right shadow

At this point, we will wrap up the course, reflect on the key learnings, key takeaways and celebrate your success.