Welcome back to the official Services Limited ISO18404:2015 blog, a fountain of Lean/Six Sigma knowledge where and when you need it! Feel free to browse through past blogs and if there’s something you want to know, please ask us!
Since the initial development of the Six Sigma approach by Motorola back around 1986, Six Sigma has been both a success and a failure. Six Sigma certifications were initially rather hard to get and they demanded respect. Unfortunately, in recent years, this has not been so much the case.
Many training companies cropped up left, right and centre to get involved in a market now littered with bad practice. They unilaterally ‘certified’ knowledge instead of looking to see what the professional could actually do, meaning you could become a Black Belt without a minute of experience nor practice.
In this blog, let’s focus on Six Sigma Green Belt’s.
Becoming a Six Sigma Green Belt under the new International Standard, ISO18404, is the first substantive step on the practitioner pyramid. This is the first of three certifiable levels of Six Sigma under ISO18404, the other two being Black and Master Black Belt.
According to the standard, the Green Belt is expected to deliver the agreed benefits of a Six Sigma project to the organisation. These improvement activities will often be within the Green Belt’s usual field of employment and operation.
Some expected roles of a Green Belt include:
A) Working with the local ‘line management’ to identify and quantify opportunities for improvement within the local environment,
B) Be required to: Work, possibly under the direction of a Black Belt or Master Black Belt or as a member of a larger Six Sigma project led, for example, by a Black Belt, and/or
Be required to lead a smaller Six Sigma project under the direction of a Black Belt, and
C) Possibly coach process operators (Yellow Belts) on process improvement methods and activities.
Five Benefits of Six Sigma Green & Black Belt Certification under ISO18404
As more organisations are discovering Six Sigma, why not ensure your key personnel are ISO18404 certified?
Delivers immediate results
When receiving training against the new International Standard, ISO18404, at Services Limited, the delegate will be required to immediately begin showing their competencies with a project within their own organisation.
Certification is competency based
Cutting against the current grain, certification against ISO18404 will now certify competencies instead of knowledge. Along the way, this will help to stamp out bad practice.
Both organisations and key personnel can be certified
The new International Standard has become one-of-a-kind. It allows for internationally recognised certification for both organisations and key personnel.
Regular checks on standard-defined competencies
Even where the key personnel or the organisation, or both, have achieved certification, that isn’t the end of it. You will still be required to keep evidence of improvement activities to retain certification.
Truly internationally recognised
In the past, many courses and certification have claimed to be internationally recognised, but had no real ground to claim this. As the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has members from 163 countries, and its standards such as ISO9001 are known to almost everyone, this is true international recognition.