Engineering/Technical (e.g., six, 3-day sessions over 6 months or 4 weeks over 5 months) aka. Black Belt. The Engineering training is an advanced, technical program ranging from four to eight months in length (training elements). While this course does teach your people very advanced tools and techniques, the training is not tool driven. The appropriate application of any tool or method is preferable to the sequential, repetitive use of a standardized set of tools. Hence, an effective program develops the candidates’ critical thinking skills while they build proficiency in the application of the tools. The links between situation diagnostics, tool selection and appropriate application are created by each participant and documented in their User Guide. To successfully learn the methods, application of the thinking and tools is necessary. Therefore, the training is designed to facilitate the use of tools between training sessions (e.g., one session of training and project reviews followed by three weeks of project work). Project reviews and site visits (mentoring) are an integral part of the development of critical thinking and the appropriate application of concepts and methods. Especially for the first sets of individuals through the program, site support is essential. The first few are pioneers of a sort—ambassadors of the new methodology. Their success is critical to the growth of the Sigma Science initiative. The frequency and periodicity of site visits is based on the rate of project work and the needs of the individual candidates. Phone, e-mail and internet support is used appropriately between classes and site visits to provide a consistent communication between the instructor and the candidates. As Master Candidates (see next section) are developed, this aspect of the work becomes increasingly internal to the organization. As previously stated, the specific contents are customized to the needs of the organization and its processes or products. However, the core methodologies are covered in most Sigma Science Inc.’s programs. These core methodologies can be grouped into four categories:
I. Critical Thinking
- Scientific Method
- Thought Maps
- Situation Diagnostics
II. Process & Product Description (Mapping)
- Process Maps
- Product Maps
- FMEA thinking
III. Sampling (without manipulation)
- Sampling
- Measurement Systems Evaluation (MSE)
- Sampling Strategies and Sampling Trees
- Analysis Techniques
- Components of Variance (COV) Studies
- Nested
- Systematic
- Crossed
- Data Mining
IV. Sampling (with Manipulation)
- Factor Relation Diagrams (FRD)
- Design of Experiments (DOE): Factorial and Fractional Factorial
- Sequential Experimentation
- Experimenting in a Noisy Environment
- Ross’ Rules of Analysis
- Robust Design
- Data Diagnostics
- Quantitative Method (ANOVA, Regression)
- Noise Strategies: Repeats, Nested, Split-plot, RCBD, RIBD, Cross Product Arrays, Covariates
- Non-linear models
My material is continually updated and is supported by papers we have written or chosen specifically designed to illuminate both fundamentals and advanced topics historically difficult to teach. In addition, I continually develop new modules and tools to support the business needs. Details of the tools and examples of cross-industry customization are provided elsewhere.
Support Course (e.g., 2 week workshop or three 3-day sessions over 2-3 months) aka. Green Belt
Support Functional Training is designed to equip a larger number of individuals in the organization with the basic Sigma Science tools. Support Functions apply their knowledge to develop initial understanding of processes, measurements systems and current data collection techniques. In addition, they develop a set of questions and hypotheses about improving the processes. It is an option for technical managers to attend this training instead of the Project Managers workshop. All participants are required to bring a minimum of one project to class. Support projects are smaller in scope than Engineering projects, and are often chosen to align directly with or provide the foundation for Engineering projects. Support training is delivered with a hands-on methodology to ensure rapid tool application and immediate generation of business results. Support training is also used to identify individuals that are willing/capable of continuing on to Engineering training. The continuation toward Engineering certification requires an additional 2-3 weeks depending on the individual.
Short Course (specially designed support classes) This course is not designed to replace the Engineering or the Support training, but to investigate specific portions of processes to support aggressive organizational goals. Its primary objective is to provide individuals with the ability to critically assess the information available/not available in existing databases and to be able to better understand process variation via critical sampling and data collection. Thus, the project goals should be directly aligned with this objective. It is expected that individuals in the classroom should be able to generate critical process questions via analysis of their existing data sets, to understand the nature of the variability of critical process parameters, and to strategically sample the process in order to be able to answer specific questions. Hence, typical project scope will include:
- Evaluating/developing new measurement processes;
- Developing thought maps for particular process areas (the analysis of historical data sets should generate better process questions that, in turn, provide guidance in new ways to collect data on the process);
- Process mapping areas of the process believed to be critical for obtaining output parameters;
- Development of sampling plans to understand dominant sources of variation;
- Collecting new data to confirm or invalidate current theories about causes of variation.