Six Sigma - Black Belt

Why attend this workshop?

Operational Excellence Black Belt is an advanced training. Although the participants are learning the more advanced techniques and tools of Six Sigma, this is not the main objectives of the course. The practical and effective usage of these tools is the key concept shaping the program's philosophy. Critical Thinking and the ability to ask suitable questions forms the basis for effective use of knowledge in practice. Pure data is no substitute for knowledge, and indeed knowledge development is the essence of Six Sigma philosophy.

Not even the most sophisticated and advanced methods of analysis will replace good data, which is to say data collected in a way that provides an opportunity to increase our knowledge and improve our products. This is the most important competency of Black Belt.

Training is based on practical tasks which involve the participant having a hands–on experience of discovering the knowledge which we want to transmit to them. We believe that this is the only way to show the practical application of Six Sigma. During training we share our experience. For every subject we present real-life cases which underline the practical application of presented concepts and tools.Training is designed to give all participants the chance to practice each learned concept and tool throughout the course. One training week requires that three to four weeks are dedicated to project work before the participants progress to the subsequent training week. Usually instruction is provided by three trainers, each of whom have second level Master Black Belt Certification and several years of professional experience.

Aim and expected results of workshops

The main objective is knowledge transmission within a suitable range and at a practical level in order to give Black Belt candidates the opportunity to carry out project work independently as well as active support of Green Belts during their project work. After this training participants will be skilled in:

Data collection planning, yielding answers to particular question which we have in respect to our processes (Sampling Plan, Design of Experimentation)
Data analysis in Practical, Graphical, and Quantitative forms
Use of Control Charts in a passive way (process monitoring) as well active (problem solving in processes)
Evaluate Measurement Systems
Experimentation Planning (factor and factor levels selection as well as selection of experimentation strategy)

Conducting and analysis of experiment (Practical, Graphical and Quantitative) and the drawing of conclusions based on experimental results

Target group

Training is designed especially for:

Process engineers
Quality engineers
Technologists
Managers (especially middle level) who want to discover and extend their knowledge about Six Sigma methodology

Workshop program

Week I:

Project examples in which Operational Excellence Six Sigma philosophy has been applied
Introduction to Six Sigma
Y = f(x) + Noise, Critical Thinking, Role of Questions, Thought Map
Introduction to Variation and Basics Statistics
Process Map and Product Map, Rate of Change Table as basis for rational sampling
Introduction to Sampling: Sampling Trees, Practical Graphical & Quantitative analysis
Sampling: How frequently to sample? What is the optimal sample size?
Passive data collection, process outcome monitoring
Measurement System Evaluation for continuous data
Measurement System Evaluation for discrete data and visual evaluation
Project Review, definition of next steps in BB project execution

Week II:

Components of Variation Study: active data collection which answers particular and detailed questions in respect to processes
Components of Variation Study: Sampling Trees, Practical, Graphical & Quantitative Analysis (estimation of sources of variation's influence on processes)
Introduction to Design of Experiments: concepts and fundamentals, experimentation methods comparison
Planning of Experiments: factors and levels selection
Full Factorial Design: Experiment Matrix construction and Analysis (Practical, Graphical & Quantitative)
Fractional Factorial Design: Experiment Matrix, Experiment Resolution and Constrains, Analysis (Practical, Graphical & Quantitative)
Sequential experimentation
Project Review, definition of next steps in BB project execution

Week III:

Experimentation on the broad range of conditions, limitations of conclusions, what is the reason that conclusions drawn from experiment are not valid in reality
Necessity of Noise incorporation into the experiment, Experiment Matrix is the planning phase only
Factor Relationship Diagram FRD as main tool for Noise management
Randomization limitation, consequences of conclusions limitation, ways of analysis
Noise Management into experiment – basic strategies and their influence on our knowledge increase and how to analyse

Repeats
Replicates
Blocking

Analysis of Variance: Fully Nested Anova vs Crossed ANOVA
Project Review, definition of next steps in BB project execution

Week IV:

Components of Variation Study – Sampling Strategies:

Nested
Systematic
Crossed

Limitations to Conclusions and way of analysis dependent on selected sampling strategy
Noise Management into Experimentation – strategies continuation

Repeats vs. Replicates (what if strategies are confused during analysis phase), ANOVA vs DoE)
Complete Randomize Block Design and Incomplete Randomize Block Design how to select appropriate strategy
Whole Plot Split Plot Design – influence of restrictions on randomization elimination on effects calculation in Experiment. DoE analysis depending on noise level for particular effect
CoV into DoE – Components of Variation Study included into particular experiment treatment

Special causes into the experiment, diagnostics and follow up
Data Transformation: when is needed? Which transformation is the best? How to transform data?
Model building: description of y = f(x) + Noise, Residual Analysis
Project Review, definition of next steps in BB project execution

Duration

Estimated duration time: 4 sessions every one takes 5 days (across 4 – 5 months)