There is quite a lot of information online already about this, and some good summary infographics, but I thought I would write this article more from a lived experience.
White belt – This is probably the vaguest of the belts in what it means and varies greatly from one company to another. You will struggle to find many formal qualifications offered by training providers on white belt certifications, and if you do its not really worth it, not worth paying for it mean. You can figure it for yourself with a few YouTube videos. Inside a company it is nearly always an online self-learning module designed by the company you work for and can be covered in 20 minutes. To me white belt really just means that you have a basic understanding of the terminology used within continuous improvement/Lean 6 Sigma and you have a feeling of what it means to whatever organisation you work for. For example, it might cover the basics of Lean Principles, or an overview of DMAIC. It might talk about root cause problem solving or the importance of standard work. Or explain what a Kaizen event is so you know what your colleagues are talking about when they are using funny words. It’s good for overall awareness. It could focus on ‘the way we do things around here ‘and introduce you to the company’s CI culture, and the reason why it does CI. For the sake of page turning a short learning module its worth doing, from an employers point of view its good to bring everyone up to speed with your terminology. In high performing CI organisations, it is often a compulsory learning module for every employee. However, it won’t teach you how to do any of the methods, and there is often no tangible delivery or output required.
Yellow Belt:
You could say yellow belt is the introduction certification, it’s considered the simplest but that doesn’t detract from the value it can add to you. You get taught how to be a project leader, and for certification you often have to deliver a project. Public courses are usually only a few hundred pounds and are usually delivered over a couple of days max. Most companies practicing Lean 6 sigma will have the ability to deliver yellow belt training in house as the tools used are relatively simple. The belt descriptor basically dictates the project complexity, size, scale and value. The scope of a yellow belt project is normally something you can deliver in 4-6 weeks, in the area where you work. It doesn’t necessarily have to deliver any financial saving just solve a defined problem. For example, a yellow belt project might look to reduce defects on a specific line in a specific part of a factory. Yellow belt is a great first step to get your feet wet, often yellow belt learners and certified practitioners are people who have a day job and use the learning to support their day to day. It can be really valuable on a journey to becoming a CI specialist, as you get to interact and practice the tools right at the coal face and make a difference to people at the lineside. Often organisations will have yellow belt ‘champions’ or a yellow belt ‘army’. Lots of people who are trained and capable of delivering projects day to day alongside their job. This can be really valuable and effective, and you wander why every company in the world doesn’t do it? Probably because the senior leadership team doesn’t understand it. One thing to note is that there are no complex data or statistical tools within a yellow belt certification, which brings us on to green belt.
Green Belt
While the principle is the same, it’s still all about being a qualified improvement project leader, green belt is a bigger methodology covering more CI Tools. Most importantly it introduces basic statistical tools like capability charts and advanced graphical tools like boxplots. Data is king in 6 sigma and this is where you really start to understand that. You will learn about standard deviation and what is meant by ‘sigma value.’ Projects are usually bigger, an area of a factory instead of just one production line. Timeline is normally longer between 3 and 6 months and there is normally an expectation of a financial return, around £50-100k. Formal learning can take around 6 weeks and normally costs around £2500. Some very high performing organisations may train this in house, but due to the statistic side of it its often outsourced. It’s a bit of a mix, of people who do this certification alongside their day job, versus people in full time CI roles. If you looking to become a CI Professional this is absolutely where you should start, don’t get fooled by the fact you can technically go straight in for a black belt certification. You lose the real life application experience if you do that, and you can always do a black belt upgrade.
Black Belt
There is a theme here, you may of figured it out, yes a Black Belt is bigger and more detailed. Black belt projects typically take 6-24 months to complete, they cover more than one area, or even more than one facility and target savings in the hundreds of thousands. The data and statistics tools are more complex, you get taught about design of experiments which is really powerful tool for understanding relationships between inputs to a process. For example, temperature, hold time, conveyor speed etc, the tool will tell you’re the best settings in order to maximise quality and performance. In addition to the statistics learning, black belt covers a bit of change management, as well as re-visiting in more detail stakeholder analysis tools. At black belt you may well be managing a portfolio of projects too so the training should cover more detailed project management and project selection tools. Public courses can be up to £5000 and can be up to 6 weeks of learning. My recommendation would be you do a black belt upgrade from a green belt certification to get to this level. I’ve seen many people go straight in at black belt and just get overwhelmed and never get certified. Black belts are designed for people in full time CI roles, often with green belt practitioners working for them.
Master Black Belt
So, there are courses called Master black belt. It kind of means prove to me you do black belt really well and have a broad experience in the field. So, you should only really go for it after several years of practicing as a black belt. There is some further learning and evidence required. It really focuses on strategy deployment, and leading cultural change in your organisation. As a master black belt, you are considered a CI Tool Master, you can teach others, you are the absolute subject matter expert in your organisation, and you would normally be part of the senior leadership team.
Summary:
If you’re looking to do your own projects in your own area, Yellow Belt is all you need. If you’re looking to make a career as a Continuous Improvement professional, then in an ideal world do your green belt, practice for a few years, do your black belt and practice for a few years and then look to achieve master status. Worth a line here now to say there is alternatives to these certifications through the apprenticeships. See more on that here. Hope you have found that useful, if you have a different view by all means share it in the comments or let us know if this has been useful for you!
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