Six Sigma: Quality ; Self-Guided

This course will help you prepare for the internationally recognized Six Sigma Black Belt and Quality Manager exams offered by the American Society for Quality (ASQ).

No Instructor. Course begins when you enroll.

Learn how to effectively apply the elements and methods of Six Sigma. Understand how more than 25 tools and methods relate to the DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control) model. Determine the relationship of basic statistics to Six Sigma and learn about the Six Sigma business case, including strategic planning, the voice of the customer (VOC), quality function deployment (QFD), benchmarking, and financial investment methods.

Discover how to use brainstorming;
Pareto charts, and critical quality help define processes, problems, and opportunities. Master the use of other key tools such as cause and effect diagrams, check sheets, scatter diagrams, failure mode and effects analysis (FEMA), and force field analysis.

In this course you will learn how to apply the DMAIC model each step of the way. You will learn how to define, plan, implement, and close a Six Sigma project. You will also know how to use process capability and how to apply lean thinking. You will understand the basics of advanced Six Sigma tools.

This course will help you prepare for the internationally recognized Six Sigma Black Belt and Quality Manager exams offered by the American Society for Quality (ASQ).

DMAIC and Basic Statistics

In the first lesson, you'll start off by investigating DMAIC, the most popular acronym within the Six Sigma body of knowledge. It stands for define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. Then, to set the stage for the remaining lessons, you'll explore basic statistics. Since many of the Six Sigma methods and tools that will be discussed require that you have a basic knowledge of statistics, you'll need to be well-prepared.

The lesson will show you how to apply the measures of location—median, mode, mean—and the measures of dispersion—range, mean absolute deviation (MAD), variance, and standard deviation (SD).

Six Sigma:
The Business Case

In this lesson, you'll take a look at the business side of Six Sigma. The lesson will start off by discussing strategic planning—a concept that looks at internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. You'll move on to two methods of identifying customer requirements—the voice of the customer (VOC) and quality function deployment (QFD). Next, you'll explore benchmarking, a technique that helps you determine how your company matches up to the competition and industry standards.

Finally, you'll look at a few financial methods to help you keep track of key objectives.

Define:
The D of DMAIC

You can't improve something unless you first define it. To help identify what you're dealing with, you'll begin this lesson by reviewing the first element of the DMAIC model: define. You'll move on and learn about the basic Six Sigma metrics—defects per unit (DPU), defects per million opportunities (DPMO), yield, and rolled throughput yield (RTY). Next, you'll investigate a few team techniques to help define conditions and situations—brainstorming, brain writing, nominal group technique (NGT), and affinity diagrams.

You'll finish up by seeing how Pareto charts and critical to quality (CTQ) relate to process and problem definition.

Measure Part I:
The M of DMAIC

The next two lessons will tackle the measuring aspect of DMAIC. Along with defining a process, problem, or opportunity, if you don't measure something, you can't improve it. You'll learn about different types of data and gain an understanding of sampling by seeing how it's used to analyze and observe populations. You'll conclude the lesson by examining three graphical methods to measure a population: histograms, stem and leaf diagrams, and box and whiskers plots.

Measure Part II:
The M of DMAIC

As you continue to learn about the measure component of DMAIC, you'll begin this lesson by looking at probability distributions, failure methods and effects analysis (FMEA), and physical measurement. The probability distributions that you'll review…