Lean Sigma Six: How does it work?

I was an Army Lean Six Sigma Program Director when I retired18 months ago. The online courses are great intro. Army offered green belt and black belt training classes a year ago. May still be available. Look for continuous process improvement on your MACOM web site or on Army web site. Should at least give you a POC.

Army belt certification required completion of training class and completion of one project. Certification may have been delegated to MACOM now.

LSS training and certification are good for resume but learning the methodology is more valuable.

There's no national standards forLSS certification like there are for project management, which has an ANSI standard. The ASQ certification is recognized. Army certification requirement is easier than some industry programs that require multiple projects with hard dollar savings.

Overall, I say go for it!

My wife is a consultant for the Government, primarily focused on organizational improvement and/or performance transformation (feel free to look up either term). And in her field, at least, it's a highly valued skill set. A word of warning, though: you'll probably want to get your black belt or master black belt in six sigma. That's where the real value lies, and I don't think a correspondence course or two will get you there.

To be clear: I can't speak to the correspondence courses, specifically. But I did quite a few of them in my time in the service, and I can honestly say that they didn't transfer well to the civilian world. At best, they gave me some knowledge of a particular subject, so I could speak to it intelligently in an interview. But they were not worth much more more than that for me.

I don't mean to deter you. Being able to speak intelligently on any subject is a huge advantage assuming you intend to pursue a particular field. It can literally make the difference between employed and unemployed. But don't hang any hopes on those correspondence courses being worth much in the civilian world - it's the knowledge that you can take away from them that really matters.

As an amusing anecdote: I work for a huge defense contractor now with 16,000+ employees (after a few acquisitions and mergers). My correspondence courses in the military were worth jack squat, if I'm being brutally honest. But they offer the equivalent of correspondence courses through an internal "Learning Management System". I imagine it's also worth very little outside of this organization. But I do them, nonetheless. I believe the old adage is at least somewhat correct: Knowledge IS power - if you know how (and when) to apply it.

http://www.sckans.edu/ have it on line.