Lean Six Sigma Black Belt|IASSC|Tips for preparation
IASSC Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification- How I cracked it
Keep calm and ‘lean’ on this article 😊
If having your name on this certificate excites you, you have come to the right place! When I was preparing for my Black Belt certification exam, it was hard for me to find resources to help me succeed in the exam. Most of the research I did landed me with people who were either trying to sell something or offered something which was not specific to my need. Therefore I am writing this article to help the aspirants.
Disclaimer: I am not selling anything.
If you are an experienced lean professional with at least 5 years of experience, I suggest you could start with the Black Belt . If not, you always have Green Belt. If you are still wondering if lean is really for you, here are some introductory articles on the concepts of lean:
1. If time is money, why waste it on non value added jobs?
2. Basics of TPM ( Total Productive Maintenance)
I went through the list of IASSC accredited service providers for Black Belt training and took up the course with one of them. I thought since this is an accredited service provider, I do not need to look any further to secure the certification. I was wrong! That is when I realized there is still a lot of ground to cover. It doesn’t matter if you choose to do the course with a training provider or study on your own, these tips will be helpful for you
Without further ado ,lets get started :
1. Making a concrete study plan is the first step
A lot of importance is laid on planning in Six Sigma project implementation. The same importance should be given to planning for a Six Sigma certification exam.
I started with the IASSC Black Belt Body of Knowledge. This is available on the IASSC website. This is a snapshot of the plan I made:
I went through each item on the Body of Knowledge and made a note what is the source I would use to study the same. I also created a Gantt Chart to help me determine on which days I will be covering each topic.Only when I started this process I found out that there was so much free material available on the internet. Frankly speaking this was more useful than the course material I received from the accredited service provider! I would highly recommend these two websites for free resources:
B. Learn and Apply Six Sigma channel on YouTube
The topics marked in blue in my plan,are the ones which require you to use a formula or perform calculations. IASSC does provide a reference document during the exam, but it doesn’t cover everything. Therefore I made my own summary of formulae I need in each phase. This was very helpful.Please leave a comment if you would like a copy emailed to you.
The more time you spend in this step, higher the success!
2. Key topic summaries
There are several key topics in the Body of Knowledge which are further broken down into subtopics and then there are types and examples and what not!
It might be confusing to study them if they are not properly organized. You might find yourself in a situation like below:
Here are some examples for key topics:
a. Methods of sampling
b. Types of data
c. Hypothesis tests
d. Types of distribution
e. Control charts
Making a summary for all the key topics really helped me. Here is a snapshot of what I did for Hypothesis tests.
By creating a summary you learn about the particular topic and also if you make it visually appealing, you can easily spot the differences between each type making it not too hard to remember.
3. Make use of social network
Lastly, don’t be afraid to reach out to those who have already cracked the exam. Social network is a very powerful tool to gather information. I reached out to at least 10 people, two of whom responded, and they were very helpful.
Please feel free to ‘lean’ on me for any help you might need 😊. I would love to payback the favors that I got.