101 Things a black belt should know

101 Things A Six Sigma Black Belt Should Know

By Thomas Pyzdek
Reproduction permitted providing copyright notice remains in tact and no changes are made to the content
Copyright © 2000 by Thomas Pyzdek, all rights reserved

1.In general, a Six Sigma Black Belt should bequantitatively oriented.
2.With minimal guidance, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to use data to convert broad generalizations into actionable goals.
3.The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to make the business case for attempting to accomplish these goals.
4.The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to develop detailed plans for achieving those goals.
5.The Six Sigma BlackBelt should be able to measure progress towards the goals in terms meaningful to customers and leaders.
6.The Six Sigma Black Belt should know how to establish control systems for maintaining the gains achieved through Six Sigma.
7.The Six Sigma Black Belt should understand and be able to communicate the rationale for continuous improvement, even after initial goals
have beenaccomplished.
8.The Six Sigma Black Belt should be familiar with research that quantifies the benefits firms have obtained from Six Sigma.
9.The Six Sigma Black Belt should know or be able to find the PPM rates associated with different sigma levels (e.g., Six Sigma = 3.4 PPM)
10.The Six Sigma Black Belt should know the approximate relative cost of poor quality associated with various sigmalevels (e.g., three sigma
firms report 25% COPQ).
11.The Six Sigma Black Belt should know how to quantitatively analyze data from employee and customer surveys. This includes evaluating
survey reliability and validity as well as the differences between surveys.
12.The Six Sigma Black Belt should understand the roles of the various people involved in change (senior leader, champion,mentor, change
agent, technical leader, team leader, facilitator).
13.The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to design, test, and analyze customer surveys.
14.Given two or more sets of survey data, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to determine if there are statistically significant differences
between them.
15.The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to quantify the valueof customer retention.
16.Given a partly completed QFD matrix, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to complete it.
17.The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to compute the value of money held or invested over time, including present value and future
value of a fixed sum.
18.The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to compute PV and FV values for various compounding periods.19.The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to compute the break even point for a project.
20.The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to compute the net present value of cash flow streams, and to use the results to choose among
competing projects.
21.The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to compute the internal rate of return for cash flow streams and to use the results to chooseamong competing projects.
22.The Six Sigma Black Belt should know the COPQ rationale for Six Sigma, i.e., he should be able to explain what to do if COPQ analysis
indicates that the optimum for a given process is less than Six Sigma.
23.The Six Sigma Black Belt should know the basic COPQ categories and be able to allocate a list of costs to the correct category.
24.Given a tableof COPQ data over time, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to perform a statistical analysis of the trend.
25.Given a table of COPQ data over time, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to perform a statistical analysis of the distribution of costs
among the various categories.
26.Given a list of tasks for a project, their times to complete, and their precedence relationships,...