Canopus LSS GB Certification Online Course3 Types of Six Sigma Certifications

Six Sigma Certification gives power to employees to bring true business transformation. This in turn facilitates an enterprise to provide better products & services to its customers. Any enterprise that certifies employees (or professionals) needs to have the necessary infrastructure such as: Six Sigma training curriculum, trainers, improvement projects, experts to mentor projects, certification criteria, etc. Immaterial of the belt one wishes to acquire, Six Sigma Certifications can be broadly classified as follows:

• First Party Certification
• Second Party Certification
• Third Party Certification

First Party Six Sigma Certification

Large Enterprises often create their internal infrastructure to certify employees. This infrastructure should include: six sigma experts, trainers, training curriculum, project selection criteria, project mentoring/coaching model, and certification criteria to certify all deserving employees. This helps establish employees as having a class above the rest, thus improving creativity and productivity of quality goods or services. Some examples include GE, Caterpillar, Bank of America, etc. Six Sigma Certification criteria, body of knowledge, and hence proficiency levels vary between different enterprises. The value of such a first party certification is often tied to brand value of enterprises. Hence certificates from fortune 100 enterprises do carry a good deal of recognition in the market.

Second Party Six Sigma Certification

Companies that do not have the infrastructure to train their employees, or lack the expertise, will engage an agency to assess and certify employees. Companies leverage the agency’s infrastructure and credibility to issue co-branded certifications. However, co-branded Six Sigma certifications often come under the scanner, as agencies might be obliged to certify employees purely out of business compulsions.

Third Party Certification

Here employees get Six Sigma certification from an agency all by themselves. An employee will realize the potential of such a certification in today’s competitive job market, and drive him/herself to complete their certification. The advantage with this type of certification is that it is a purely neutral certificate. Of course, the brand of agency matters and the employee will need to satisfy all criteria to get certified. Due to lack of a universal certification body, many agencies may have diluted certification standards. This makes it easy to receive a certification, but with little real value attached to it. If you are looking for a six sigma certification, then, check your options. Consider the following:

• First Party Certification: You need to check if the employer’s brand is universally recognized and if it is a fortune 100 company.
• Second Party Certification: You need to check if the criteria used for certification is in line with the industry standard, and if there is enough hands-on exposure to six sigma tools and techniques.
• Third Party Certification: You need to check the training curriculum and content, industry specific examples, case studies, statistical software exposure, certification criteria, personal guidance, brand, etc., between various third party certifiers before selecting one.

A good trade-off will be to receive training from a reputed organization in fulfilling the above guidelines, and then take the Six Sigma Certification from an industry recognized body like ASQ. This way you get the best of both!

Have you ever thought about this before – Will Six Sigma help me become a better leader? Isn’t leadership a soft skill unlike Six Sigma? Six Sigma is more about playing with numbers, statistics, Minitab!!! Ask leaders of organizations that follow Six Sigma as a management philosophy, and they will disagree.

Let’s consider 4 important dimensions of leadership that most world class organizations strive to instil in their associates.

Let us consider one at a time, and understand how Six Sigma can help focus on these 4 aspects.

• Deep and broad business perspective is the first and foremost pre-requisite for any leader to growth their business.  They have the ability to fragment or aggregate processes/tasks, and develop a meaningful understanding. Good leaders are quick to break complex processes into simple & small units, and manage them effectively. We call this ability as Strong Process Orientation in Six Sigma.
• Good leaders challenge the status quo, and thereby reinvent the business. Availability of information & factual data empowers a leader to take bold decisions.
• Businesses that are customer centric grow faster . Moreover customer requirements constantly change. Ability to choose the right method to reach out to customer, ask the right questions and present the data appropriately is the key. In other words, good leaders take additional care to establish and manage Voice of Customer programs.
• Customer retention and repeat business is all about instilling higher internal standards and practices to make processes error-free or defect-free.

• In order to retain great talent, a leader should be able to align functional goals to individual’s KPI’s. They should use data to differentiate high and poor performers rather than intuition and gut feeling.
• A good leader’s ability to communicate crisply and candidly is only possible when they are data centric.

 Drive Culture of Execution

• Results need to consistent. Great leaders manage variation along with averages. One of the primary goals of Six Sigma is to reduce Variation.
• Data or fact based decisions result in high probability of success. This means more confidence about the team and better alignment.

• Constantly raising the bar is possible when one understands the CTQs, key drivers of the business, and process capability very well.
• Displaying personal courage cannot come without confidence. And confidence comes only with data.

So a good leader will not miss a single opportunity to apply the above principles of Six Sigma in their business to deliver results consistently. That is why at many world class organizations, Six Sigma is in the fabric of who they are. So, beyond doubt, Six Sigma help me become a better leader!