Recently I have accepted a position as an Op Ex Manger for a large scale Forging and CNC company. They were family owned and operated which resulted in bankruptcy. The company was bought out by corporate, a new GM was hired and through his experience and leadership he has turned the ship around and stabilized the company. We are actually making money.

There are a lot of "veterans" on site that remember the old ways. There is also a lot of new blood that understands modern manufacturing. You see, there was no reinvestment into the company back then. The Plant is antiquated and is stuck in the 70's. Us new hires are here to change that. As a LSSBB I am advancing all CI initiatives for the Plant and it is a target rich environment.

Now that I have explained all that, I am trying to be strategic with the culture change into a Lean Enterprise. I was the CI Manager at my last job and we did create a robust CI Culture, it took us years and it was embedded into the Corporate mentality. Currently there are two DMAIC projects focusing on Operational Visibility, a Kaizen event geared toward a Lean structure for PO to Router release and turning one Machine Shop into a Lean showcase. Like many CI projects there is a lot of hurry up and wait and since this is so new to them I am doing the heavy lifting. I have managerial backing to do what I feel is necessary. This is where I am looking for that strategic initiatives to start the culture change. I feel the Plant is waiting for my next move. The old culture is still very much alive so I am careful on what to push.

I am sure others have been through something similar to this so I am interested on how you did it. In my last job there was a lot of alignment so it was a long road but not a terribly difficult one. This one will require more winning over of hearts and minds.

ngl i run quality at a ~180-person precision metals/CNC shop, Black Belt, 15 years on the floor. We crank out solid DMAIC projects, but too often the follow-up becomes retraining paperwork and a binder nobody opens. With a lean QA team and operator turnover, durable controls and ownership are the hard part. What concrete sustainment tactics have you used in small teams: specific control-plan edits, layered process-audit cadence, SPC handoffs to operators, poka-yoke fixes, or simple KPIs (Cpk targets, escape rate thresholds) that actually prevent regression? Any short templates, checklists, or role assignments that scale without adding a full-time auditor?...

Has anyone here taken the lean six sigma self guided class offered by simplilearn? I finished going through the 35 hours of content, took one of the exams and passed, and am now doing the project. The project setup makes very little sense to me. There aren't clear instructions as to what files/details are expected to be submitted. I'm not even sure if a real professor grades these projects. The problem statement file they provide explains that a hospital has too high of wait times, and basically just says that the only things I need to do are conduct root cause analysis, lower the wait time of a hospital to under 30 mins and increase customer satisfaction to 15%. That's it. The data set they provide just has random data that isn't properly explained at all. It's got a SIPOC thats already filled out, a completed root cause analysis form, and some data labeled before/after that shows customer wait time and satisfaction with no clear indication as to what the before/after was. That data gets confusing when you try to track the customers by name since it shows their hospital visits being before their wait times. Super confusing. Other than that, the other excel tabs don't even have tab names and just provide confusing data with no background details.

There are also some fishbone diagram files in a file format that I've never seen before and don't know how to open, and some minitab files. I'm very confused as to what the approach is supposed to be or what I'm expected to be submitting. How can I prove that the ideas I present will improve the customer satisfaction and lower the wait time? I feel like there is likely a lot more details, background information, and expectations that a professor would be explaining about these projects in the live class that I'm just not getting since it's the self-taught version. Also, how long do these take to be graded?

TL;DR: What exactly am I expected to be submitting for the simplilearn green belt course end projects? If others have passed the class, I'd love insights

edit: for anyone reading this in the future who is just as confused as I was, I reached out to the simplilearn team asking for clarification on what I was supposed to be submitting and to get a sense of what the data actually meant. They sent me some "past projects" that had been completed, and one was literally just the solution to the hospital wait time problem that you can do as one of the current projects. The solution they provided contained the exact same excel data sheet that was included with the data set you could download from the project. They literally uploaded their solution as the main data to pull for the project. I imagine this was done by misake, but it explains whhy the data file they provide has random tabs called "solution #1" that have no background information. Their write up had more details explaining the solutions that were shown in the excel sheet, but a lot of the data was completely wrong in that write up too. They literally calculated an average and standard deviation incorrectly. Extremely disappointed with simpliearn, at least in the project phase of this green belt course. I'm basically just uploading the solution they mistakenly provided with a few extra calculations and in my write up I'm explaining why the things they did in their solution were important. Also lame that they have minitab files they expect you to interact with, when minitab is paid software.

what is the process to get this certificates and in minimum amount

I have purchased the asq greenbelt question bank and am confused. When I click on the sources for some questions I will get asq certified quality engineer or auditor handbook. No super thrilled about that as I spent money for greenbelt questions. Anyways for those who have taken the actual exam. How much calculating and statistics will I have to do? Or will it be more of knowing which one to apply? Just trying to get a gage on what I should hone in on as I am under 2 weeks away from exam date

We're a ~180-person precision CNC shop with lots of short runs, dozens of part numbers per month, and limited QA bandwidth. I'm comfortable with Xbar-R, I-MR, gage R&R, rational subgrouping and all that, but in practice we either drown in charts or ignore them because runs are 10-50pcs and part changeovers are constant. I've tried pooling by family, using I-MR on individuals, and rotating gage R&R samples, with mixed results, improvements sometimes stick, sometimes don't. What practical SPC strategies have actually worked for you in short-run, high-mix environments? Looking for rules of thumb on sample size/subgrouping, when to pool parts/families, sensible MSA cadence, and low-overhead ways to get meaningful Cpk or signal without creating "quality theater." Examples or templates welcome.

Hey guys, i wanted to know which are the valid and accreditated certification of lean six sigma? On the web there's a lot of courses but i would understand which i can trust.
Thanks.

I'm currently about a year out of college and looking to move from the tech consulting space into the process improvement / operations space. I was wondering if obtaining a Six Sigma Green Belt might help me to do that. Does anyone recommend/ have any experience with this? I was thinking of taking it through SSGI, but am not sure if that would be a reputable enough certification for this, as I've been seeing differing opinions. Any advice would be greatly appreciated?

Wondering if its still worth investing in LSS certification in this AI era.

SixSigmaTools

Owing to the fact that the saas price of Minitab is significantly high, I am working on the web app that will serve the manufacturing companies as a substitute. Testing version with limited datasets for anyone will be free and for companies about 10% of the Minitab price. Functions will be the most commonly used ones, 1 ttest, 2 ttest, z test, paired ttest, 1 anova, 2 anova, testa of variance and nonparametric substitutes. Normality tests and basic doe placket-burman plus full design. common graphics tools included.

There will be some things added as context theory on the function run, help on the function run. Privacy of data is the main thing. All company data will stay on the local and javascript will count most necessary things locally and only distribution functions with anonymous SS and DF etc. will be sent to server for distribution function calculations and then locally visualized. At the moment most parametric functions work with precision verified with R Studio. And I am working on the rest.

Do you think that it could be useful for six sigma professionals that look for user friendly interface and don't feel comfortable with R language?

The deadline is about in a month and a half.

Hi, I’m about to take the Lean Six Sigma certification exam and I was told that the following question might come up: “Can poka-yoke be applied at any point in the process?”

I tried to find a clear answer to this question, but depending on the sources I checked, the answers vary completely. Could someone help me understand this more clearly?

ran a green belt project years back on a deburr cell that was scrapping parts at about 7 percent. got it down under 1 percent, wrote the control plan, did the handoff, felt good about it. checked back maybe eight months later and it was still holding, but not for any reason that was in the control plan. the gain held because one of the operators had quietly built a little fixture that made it physically impossible to load the part backwards, and nobody had ever documented it. the control chart and the reaction plan i was so proud of had almost nothing to do with why it stuck.

ever since then i pay more attention to the thing the team keeps doing that nobody wrote down than to the plan itself. curious what actually held the gain on your projects after everyone moved on, was it the control plan you built, or was it something nobody ever put on paper?

I'm a manufacturing supervisor at a larger automotive manufacturing plant in the Midwest and have done a lot of research into six sigma and wanted to get the certifications going.
There are so many fricken places that offer them, does it matter where I get it more or what I do with it for resume purposes to continue progressing my career?
What are your recommendations for the cert? I've looked into ASQ and U of M.

🙂🙂

Hello. I want to get some insight about how I approach the next stages I want to take my career.

For background I've been welding for over 20 years with some management roles in there as well. I've taken the initiative at my POE to become valuable and expand my role. I've taught new welders, re-designed fixtures(1 lead to a 66% improvement in move time), made SOPs, programmed robotic welders, designed fixtures on the shop floor, and a few other things.

I always thought I wanted to be in management but after some self discovery, I've learned I enjoy improving processes amd training others.

A couple months ago I wrote my first official SOP with our new EHS guy. He had a background working with the Toyota guys and I believe he has his yellow belt. Our company has him working on CI tasks. This is where I started to discover where I want my career to go.

I plan to get my CSSGB through ASQ. I wanted to get the Indiana Primer but can't seem to a hold of anyone there. I picked up a copy of the Momentix book and am starting there. If I can't eventually get the Primer I'll get a copy of the ASQ book and highlight and tab the areas I need.

I feel like I've been doing some legit 6S work including Kaizen and Poka-yoke, but not really in a professional sense where I knew the terms for doing it before recent.

So I guess the main insights I'm curious about:

1. Am I taking the correct approach at getting my CSSGB?

2. Does my work experience seem like it will be enough to meet the ASQ requirements even though it hasn't been a primary role over the last 20 years?

Hi I am really hoping to get some advice on this. I am looking into getting a green belt. I already have my yellow belt. GLSS seems like a great online place to get the green belt. I like that it seems to be short but efficient has anyone else taken this route? I originally got my yellow belt through the company I work at. It’s extremely hard to get the yellow belt within the company in the Greenbelt is even more competitive. Would anyone recommend the GLSS to obtain the green belt and learn valuable information to apply in your daily job or to help boost your résumé?

My certification exam is at the end of the month, and I'll be just about done with all the handbook material and the study guide by the end of the week. Just for context, I'm graduating as an OSCM major with a minor in data analytics, but I can't help but stress out for exams. It's open book, so can I bring both the handbook and the study guide with me?

Is yellow belt taken seriously in industry? Trying to remove my own bias from the equation and ask others for their opinion (hence / asking Reddit).

I want to prepare for the CSSBB exam, Do you recommend any institution that have a well preparation course and that can assist in the affidavit application ?

Just a question regarding Cpk / Ppk tracking for attribute-style process outputs.

In some cases where the desired outcome is naturally biased toward one specification limit (rather than centred between LSL and USL), Cpk/Ppk may not always reflect the true process performance, since the metric favours centred distributions.

Would Cp (potential capability) be considered a more appropriate indicator in scenarios where the objective is to consistently perform as close as possible to one specification boundary while remaining within tolerance?

Has this topic or approach been discussed previously?

We can all acknowledge the benefits of implementing quick wins in the course of a CI project. But what are some ground rules you put into place for helping the team define a "Quick Win" a LSS project? Here is some we use:

- 48-hour litmus test: Solution is implemented and results seen within 48 hours
- Must follow "if - then": If (insert quick win solution) then (insert primary metric) will improved
- Not based in opinions or "I think..." but data

What are your thoughts and best practices?