LEAN SIX SIGMA GREEN BELT

Section One:
Six Sigma Principles
and Concepts

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 LEAN SIX SIGMA GREEN BELT

INTRODUCTION TO SIX SIGMA

Bill Smith (1929-1993) is considered to be the “Father of Six Sigma” and in
his role as a Vice President and Senior Quality Manager for Motorola, he
pioneered the Six Sigma methodology for organisational improvement in the
late 1980s. Six sigma generated billions of dollars of savings and
improvements for Motorola and since then many organisations including
General Electric, Allied Signal and Honeywell have been prominent is using
this methodology to improve customer relationships and to achieve
organisational success. Indeed, Jack Welsh, then Chairman and CEO of
General Electric launched Six Sigma in GE around 1996 and he became a
global promoter for Six Sigma. The successes achieved have resulted in an
evolution or even a revolution as organisations strive to deploy the principles
and concepts behind the Six Sigma methodology.
In recent years there has been a great deal of interest around the application
of Six Sigma techniques to accelerated process improvement.
Organisational leaders have read and heard about financial gains that some
leading Six Sigma advocates have made and are keen to replicate this level
of success within their own organisations.
When examining the tools and concepts applied within the Six Sigma
methodology there are similarities with other improvement strategies
employed within organisations, e.g. ISO9001, the Australian Business
Excellence Framework, Balanced Scorecard, PDSA, etc. These similarities
mean that Six Sigma can be adopted in a complementary manner to
enhance existing organisational systems or be used as a driver for realising
strategy.
DMAIC is the improvement model used within Six Sigma:

Figure: DMAIC Improvement Model

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 LEAN SIX SIGMA GREEN BELT

WHAT IS SIX SIGMA (6σ

σ)?
Six Sigma can be defined in a number of ways:
• As a measure of quality within an organisational process
• As a highly disciplined process for accelerated improvement that
helps organisation focus on providing near-perfect products and
services
• As an enabler or vehicle for cultural change, influencing how
organisations understand their customer and themselves
• A measure of quality within an organisational process.

The term sigma (σ) is taken from a letter in the Greek alphabet and is used in
statistics as a measure of how far a given process deviates from perfection
(variation).
For a business process, the sigma value is a metric that indicates how well
that process is performing. The higher the sigma value, the better. More
specifically, sigma measures the capability of the process to perform defect or
error free work as defined by the customer. A defect or error is anything that
has the potential to result in customer dissatisfaction. With Six Sigma, the
common measurement is "defects per unit," where a unit can be virtually
anything, for example: a part within a larger component, a component, a raw
material, an entry in a form or document, a clerical error, a telephone enquiry,
etc.
A sigma value or level is an indicator of how often defects or errors are likely
to occur. As this value increases and approaches Six Sigma, customer
satisfaction levels increase with costs and cycle times decreasing. Six Sigma
is the goal, which equates to 3.4 defects per million opportunities or a yield of
99.99966%.
So in simple terms, a Sigma Level represents the number of deviations from
the mean. The table below demonstrates these Sigma Levels.

Long Term Sigma (Zlt) Yield DPMO

1σ 30.85% 691,463
2σ 69.15% 308,538

3σ 93.32% 66,807

4σ 99.38% 6,210

5σ 99.977% 233

6σ 99.99966% 3.4
Table: Sigma Conversion Tab

DPMO represents the number of Defects per Million Opportunities that will
be discussed in more detail on the next few pages.
It is important to note that the need for a process to be at a Six Sigma level
will depend on a number of factors, e.g. customer needs, cost, competitive
environment, legislative requirements, etc.

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 LEAN SIX SIGMA GREEN BELT

To help place this into context, the following examples show the differences
between Four Sigma and Six Sigma:

How “Good” is Six Sigma?

Four Sigma (99.38% Good) Six Sigma (99.99966% Good)

equates to: equates to:

• 20,000 lost articles of mail per hour • 7 articles of lost mail per hour

• Unsafe drinking water for almost 15 • One unsafe minute of drinking

minutes each day water every 7 months

• 5,000 incorrect surgical operations • 1.7 incorrect surgical operation

per week per week

• 2 short or long landings at most • 1 short or long landing every 5

major airports each day years
• 200,000 wrong drug prescriptions • 68 wrong prescriptions per year
each year
Table: How “Good” is Six Sigma

Source: Six Sigma Demystified, Tooling and Production, April 2002

A highly disciplined process for accelerated improvement

As a measure, Six Sigma is related to the application of statistics; however,
the Six Sigma methodology is more than statistics with the real emphasis on
a process for accelerated improvement.
In order to gain a greater understanding of what Six Sigma is, the concept of
variation needs to be explored.

UNDERSTANDING VARIATION
Organisations often measure the average or mean of a process to
understand how they are performing and to help with decision making.
However, customers of these processes do not feel the average or mean –
this is calculated – what they really feel is the variance or variation of the
process. Customer dissatisfaction is invariably a result of process variation.
Six Sigma focuses on reducing and eliminating process variation, and once
this has been achieved, further improvements are made to how capable the
process is at meeting customer requirements.
Variation exists everywhere. Sometimes it goes unnoticed and does not
influence customer perceptions; however, at other times it can be felt directly
by the customer. In some circumstances customers can find such variation
acceptable and in other circumstances it can create high levels of
dissatisfaction.
Some examples of where variation can be seen
• Waiting times for service in a restaurant
• Queue lengths at the entrance to a concert or sporting event
• Advice given by sales people when purchasing a new home
entertainment system
• Amount of coffee and milk in a cappuccino
• Time taken to service a car
• Time to get an answer from a call centre.

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 LEAN SIX SIGMA GREEN BELT

ACTIVITY 1 – CONSIDERING VARIATION

Objective:
To demonstrate how variation can affect your organisation's ability to fulfil
your customers’ requirements.

Task:
Identify examples of variation (consider your organisation and those that you
have dealings with) and show the results of this variation that may affect your
customers (consider internal and external customers). Record your results in
the table below:

Variation Result

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Six Sigma Green Belt (Incorporating Lean)
5 Days - SPECIALIST
Purpose
Learn to effectively implement Six Sigma Green Belt projects
(i.e. small to medium sized improvement projects). In this
highly interactive course, learn to apply the principles of
problem solving using the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve
and Control (DMAIC) model along with the use of basic
statistics and improvement strategies.
Course Outline
This course covers the following topics:
• History, background and philosophy of Six Sigma
• Overview of DMAIC roadmap
• Define – project prioritisation, benefits definition,
problem and goal definition, VOC, CTQ, SIPOC, project
charter
• Measure – MSA, data types, sampling, data collection,
normality, control charts, process capability
• Analyse – cause and effect, process and data analysis,
Lean tools, hypothesis testing, root cause validation
• Improve – solutions generation and criteria, creative
thinking, impact analysis, improve control charts
• Control – standardisation, documentation, monitoring,
project closure
• Managing Six Sigma - nature of change, keys to success
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, participants
should be able to:
• Run a Green Belt project
• Understand the key aspects of Six Sigma
• Use the DMAIC methodology
• Select Six Sigma projects
• Undertake root cause analysis and validation
• Utilise creative thinking techniques
• Plan, implement and devise control strategies
Achievement
Upon request, participants will be issued with a Certificate
of Attendance. SAI Global Green Belt Certification can also
be achieved for an additional fee of $550. The certification
process involves the completion of a Green Belt project
which will be assesses against the Green Belt body of
knowledge.
Who should attend?
• Team leaders, project managers and functional managers
who are responsible for implementing solutions to
important customer and business issues
• Improvement practitioners seeking to add an
understanding of the Six Sigma discipline to their
current skills
• Those seeking to increase their contribution to the
bottom line of their business and enhance their
employment prospects
• All personnel responsible for leading continuous
improvement projects
PRICING
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