Posted on Jul 26, 2016
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Every few weeks I see an RP question about LSS certification and its value. I am an Army Certified Black Belt. My certification required completion of a 4-week (64 class hours) training course and completion of one Black Belt project. What LSS certification do you have? How did you earn it? Has it helped your military or civilian career? (Picture is shooting "statapult." in LSS class)
Posted in these groups: 
Process Improvement
Lean Six Sigma Green BeltLean Six Sigma Black Belt
Lean Six Sigma Course
Training
Process Improvement Lean Six Sigma Green BeltLean Six Sigma Black Belt Lean Six Sigma Course Training
Edited >1 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 12
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I work for Cemex Inc. The company created a requirement last year that all managers have to get at least to green belt. I've done the classes for yellow belt but no kaizen events have been initiated to complete the certification. We sent all of our division continuous improvement leaders to Catapilar in Pioria, IL to get black belt certified & they're supposed to teach the rest of us. It's not a bad system, but I think it's just the "corporate" flavor of the month and will fade away or be replaced by something else.
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CPO Gregory Smith
I agree. This is the second continuous improvement initiative we have launched in the passed five years. No matter what you call it, it's all the same stuff based on the 5S model that's been around for years. They just change the packaging and give it a new name.
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MSgt (Join to see)
If the contractor brought in to teach you all this stuff says "its not the flavor of the month" it is...
I have seen LSS around for years in some form or another. Like anything else it get warped and beaten to death.
I have seen LSS around for years in some form or another. Like anything else it get warped and beaten to death.
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Lt Col Jim Coe
CPO Gregory Smith, I agree with your assessment that process improvement in one name or another has been around for at least 50 years. 5S is a set of tools and techniques in the Lean side of Lean Six Sigma. The Army taught 5S in the Green Belt and Black Belt courses. Many other lean tools, like process mapping, made it into the Army version of Lean Six Sigma.
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I went through the training and project facilitation for Green Belt at NSWC Dahlgren. Right after I did the training the command did a 180 and went from requiring everyone to participate in some type of project every year to completely dropping it. I agree that having a bunch of office workers being required to do a cost savings project that would have to show a target return on investment was a bad idea, but was disappointed that we completely moved away from it. I never did anything after completing my training and it hasn't impacted my civilian or military career.
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Lt Col Jim Coe
Lean Six Sigma in the services world can be more difficult than manufacturing. The basic tools and techniques can be applied to any type of process, but showing hard savings is more difficult when the process outcome is a service instead of a product. All the projects we did at Army SDDC were for services and most saved labor hours and possibly a small amount of materials. In the civilian world you might be able to reduce manpower positions if you improve a process; in Government it's very hard to delete even empty manpower slots.
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