A Lean Six Sigma certification is a certification in the Lean Six Sigma process improvement methodology. You can obtain a certification in Lean only with the most common courses to be Lean Practitioner or Lean Leader. If you also add Six Sigma to the training then the most common certifications are Yellow Belt, Green Belt and Black Belt. This blog talks about Lean Six Sigma certifications in general.
What is Lean Six Sigma?
The goal of Lean Six Sigma is to improve processes, minimize errors and variation, speed up response times and reduce cost to make customers happy and increase overall profits!
Lean is all about speed and increasing throughput through the elimination of waste, whereas Six Sigma is about quality improvements, which means reducing variation and defects in products and processes!
Both will improve the customer experience and bottom-line results!
So, if you have customers complaining about slow delivery times, and/or defects in the product and services you deliver, obtaining a Lean Six Sigma certification is the course to fix those!
Is a Lean Six Sigma certification worth it?
Obtaining any form of Lean Six Sigma certification is best thing you can do in your career. Many of us are asked or want to solve problems but often we are not successful at it. A Lean Six Sigma certification puts you on a journey to become successful at solving problems such that it improves the customer experience, lower your cost, and makes you a better leader. Lean Six Sigma is about all results! And organizations want results! The skills you learn are invaluable not seen in many other business courses. Given the short amount of time to commit to one of the courses (for example 6 days for Green Belt, 8 days for Black Belt Services and 10 days for Black Belt Manufacturing), obtaining this certification is absolutely worth it and unique in its kind!
The need to improve in today’s environment
In some shape or form, everyone has been affected by the global Covid-19 pandemic. Governments, businesses and people alike are still facing the challenge of adapting to this new set of circumstances.
Lean Six Sigma is aimed at adapting to change; achieving continuous improvement even when the world around us is changing at a rapid pace. More than ever, we now need to innovate and improve the way we work.
So how do organizations need to respond now and more importantly recover in a post COVID-19 world once the economy starts growing again?
The answer is productivity! You need to figure out how to do more with less. Learning how to recognize waste is the key to success.
Recognize waste is only the first step, next you focus on eliminating it. Lean Six Sigma is the way to achieve all that.
Lean Six Sigma is a proven method and timeless
Delivering tangible results for the organization is the ultimate goal of any Lean Six Sigma initiative. This ensures that the program builds credibility, creates early momentum and buy-in throughout the organization. It is not uncommon that completed projects deliver 4-5x Return on Investment (ROI) from the Lean Six Sigma initiative in terms of cost savings, quality improvements and/or better customer experience. Delivering breakthrough results is the power of Lean Six Sigma! Any organization has problems be it process or product related! And organizations struggle to effectively deal with this! Lean Six Sigma can often be the answer! This makes Lean Six Sigma timeless. As long as organizations have problems, Lean Six Sigma can solve them. And this has been proven for decades all over the globe by many organizations, small, medium and large!
Personal development
A Lean Six Sigma certification is truly a game-changer in your personal career development. Just as customers pay for high quality value, so do organizations for individuals with Lean Six Sigma skills and certifications. Let’s look at some numbers:
- Zippia lists the average salary of a Black Beltin the USA to be $88,305 with the top 10% making more than 110,000 per year (https://www.zippia.com/lean-six-sigma-black-belt-jobs/salary/)
- At the time of this article, they listed over 6,000 Black Belt jobs available across the nation
- The web site indeed.com reports that the average Lean Six Sigma Black Belt salary as of March 14, 2011 is $101,000. This value is 38% higher than average salaries for all job postings in the US. (https://www.pyzdekinstitute.com/blog/news-blog/lean-six-sigma-black-belt-salary-tops-100k.html)
Why are Lean Six Sigma individuals in such high demand?
Besides the fact that Lean Six Sigma individuals make organizations perform better, they are hired because of their unique skill set. To a varying degree, you will have the ability to learn the following new skills:
- Business acumen
- Analytical skills
- Problem Solving
- Project Management
- Change Management
You are solving many problems for the organization while you are working on your personal development with powerful new skills! A win for you and a win for the organization!
You are the change agent! You are the individual that the organization, and its leadership relies on to give them a roadmap to solving problem successfully, permanently and with impactful results! All of this means, you are learning to become much more of a business leader, using data analysis to solve problems, running successful projects whilst influencing and managing change with key stakeholders in the organization. These are lifelong skills that you will carry forward for the rest of your career!
For whom is a Lean Six Sigma certification relevant?
Basically, any professional with a keen interest in process improvement, customer experience, and/or performance excellence in general should attend a Lean Six Sigma course. The methodology is business model and process neutral. This means that the tools can be applied to any process not just manufacturing. Services organizations like healthcare, financial services, government, supply chain and many others, have Lean Six Sigma professional working for them.
Where to get a Lean Six Sigma certification?
There are many providers offering Lean Six Sigma certification at various price levels. Therefore, it is important that you get your certificate from a reputable firm. Also cheaper doesn’t mean better. It is about the depth of the curriculum and the way of teaching (needs to be hands-on and practical!) that sets providers apart from each other. Also learning the theory is not enough, only by applying the tools in practice (doing a process improvement project or two) will you start to understand the principles.
Look for a provider with credentials and accreditations that proves the curriculum is of high-quality standards. For example, ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is one such accredited organization that aims to set international standards for Lean Six Sigma.
The Lean Six Sigma Company is one of few the providers in the world, that is accredited with two such important standards:
- ISO 18404; Skills and competencies required to become a Lean Six Sigma professional
- ISO 13053; Tools required in the Lean Six Sigma curriculum
We are one of the few providers that offers a Black Belt training for the Services industry and the Manufacturing industry.
In addition, The Lean Six Sigma Company has many experienced trainers, that can also help you with coaching your project. Here you will find all our courses: https://www.theleansixsigmacompany.us/courses/
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