6 Sigma, Six Sigma Black Belt
If you have heard of this management program, you may wonder exactly what is the 6 in 6 Sigma, and what is Six Sigma Black Belt? Six Sigma, in general, is a quality control improvement method of production or service. It was developed for Motorola, and has seen good acceptance and success in the workplace. People with the Six Sigma Training and Certification on their resumes have an edge in finding work because employers recognize the importance of customer satisfaction and product quality, and the contribution that employees trained in Six Sigma can make to their organization and operations.
The 6 in 6 Sigma refers to the highest level of achievement of defect and error elimination, based on a statistical method of calculation. It is 99.9997% effectiveness that produces over the long term a defect level below 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). Levels 4 and 5 are close, but 6 is the best. Since the entire program is geared towards this level of excellence, the program adopted the name 6 Sigma (Six Sigma).
The Six Sigma Black Belt designates a person who is just below top management but above the rest of the employees. Their job is 100% devoted to finding new projects that would benefit from the 6 Sigma methods, and they are experts in knowledge about these methods of improvement. They work closely with the next level of employees below, the Green Belts, in implementing the processes for improvement.
Part of the success of Six Sigma quality improvement depends on having everyone in the organization, from management on down, on the same page of looking for ways to improve the process continually. The theory is that steps toward improvement can be quantified and measured, and thus achieved by taking measurable steps to reduce defects and errors. This in turn, increases customer satisfaction because they will be receiving a superior product in the outcome.
The employee who follows the upward path of Six Sigma training is on a path to upper level management. This is another reason to put any Six Sigma training a person has in a prominent place near the top of their resume. As they get certified and training in Green Belt, Black Belt, and Master Black Belt, they approach the top level of Champion, which is the upper management level designation. The upper level managers need to fully understand the entire Six Sigma methodology.