Six Sigma Certification: Cost, Levels, Types
Jonathan Reed
⚡ Smart Summary
Six Sigma Certification validates professional mastery of a statistical quality-management methodology used to minimise defects in products and services. It spans five belt levels, from White to Master Black, issued mainly by ASQ, IASSC, and CSSC.
What is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma is a quality management approach that helps individuals or organizations minimize and eliminate defects in products and services. It is a group of techniques that helps you with quality improvement.
Six Sigma methodology is based on statistical analysis instead of guesswork to improve processes with unknown problems.
The word Sigma is a statistical term that helps a professional judge how far a specific process is from perfection.
Key Benefits of Six Sigma
Here are the major advantages and benefits of the Six Sigma process:
- Significantly cuts down the cost for any organization and improves customer satisfaction.
- Shortens time to market.
- Reduces defects, rejections, and re-work, and helps you simplify operations.
- Improves competitive position.
- In the Six Sigma process, 99.9999966% of the products manufactured are expected to be free of defects.
| Process Sigma | DPMO (Defect Per Million Opportunities) | Process Yield |
|---|---|---|
| 6.0 | 3.4 | 99.99966% |
| 5.0 | 230 | 99.97700% |
| 4.0 | 6210 | 99.37900% |
| 3.0 | 66,800 | 93.32000% |
| 2.0 | 308000 | 69.20000% |
| 1.0 | 690000 | 31.0% |
The process allows you to remove waste and inefficiency, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction by delivering results according to the customer’s expectations.
History of Six Sigma
Here are some important landmarks from the Six Sigma history:
- In 1970, Motorola started experimenting with problem-solving using statistical analysis.
- In 1986, Bill Smith, a senior scientist working at Motorola, introduced the concept of Six Sigma to standardize the way defects are counted.
- In 1987, Motorola officially launched its Six Sigma program.
- In 1991, Motorola certified its first Black Belt Six Sigma expert.
- In 2000, Six Sigma was effectively established as an industry standard. Training, consultancy, and implementation of the Six Sigma methodology were formalized.
What is Six Sigma Certification?
The Six Sigma Certification ensures that a Six Sigma certified professional is exposed to the complete Six Sigma Body of Knowledge (BoK). Candidates should be able to meet a minimum standard of proficiency for Six Sigma certification and its implementation.
The Six Sigma Certification has five levels:
- White Belt
- Yellow Belt
- Green Belt
- Black Belt
- Master Black Belt
However, it is not necessary to be Six Sigma belt certified at all levels. You can select the level that is most appropriate according to your career objectives.
Types of Six Sigma certification
The five types of Six Sigma Certification training are:
- Six Sigma White Belt
- Six Sigma Yellow Belt
- Six Sigma Green Belt
- Six Sigma Black Belt
- Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Six Sigma White Belt
Six Sigma White Belt certified training courses are geared toward providing you with a fundamental comprehension of the Lean Six Sigma outline. It involves process improvement, variability, and adverse effects on process performance. It gives brief information about the specific roles that every team member plays.
Six Sigma Yellow Belt
Six Sigma Yellow Belt is a basic level course. It teaches you some basic methodologies. It also covers a few of the underlying improvement procedures along with important metrics.
Six Sigma Green Belt
The Six Sigma Green Belt training and certification course allows individuals to learn how to create charts and process maps and to control an entire plan to guide other employees, describing the Six Sigma roles within an organization. The Green Belt designation mostly belongs to the team leader or a senior member of the team working directly with the team leader.
Six Sigma Black Belt
The Six Sigma Black Belt Certification course allows individuals to perform factorial experiments and multiple regression, and to describe the various types of process optimization. A Black Belt should be able to understand team dynamics and assign team member roles according to his or her skill level.
Master Black Belt
The two-week Master Black Belt training program is the highest Six Sigma certification program. It offers an advanced and highly focused approach to Six Sigma projects and statistical methods.
It is a useful certification course for a person who deals with a team or is part of executive leadership. The Master Black Belt Six Sigma professional should be able to answer procedural questions and resolve any complex technical issues.
Learning objectives of Six Sigma certification
Here are the essential learning objectives of Six Sigma Certification:
- Six Sigma certification helps you to increase your value to your employer and its clients.
- Helps you to improve customer satisfaction and the quality of products and services.
- Reduces the process cycle time and therefore allows overall cost savings of up to 30%.
- Helps you to identify and improve requirements in the project definition phase.
- Explains how to measure product and process.
- Helps you to perform Data Analysis and hypothesis testing.
- It allows possible improvement actions for the performance of variations.
- Makes you the right fit to achieve organizational goals.
- You will attain higher levels of positions in the organization.
- This certification training enhances your chances of promotion.
- You can make your existing job easier by applying the Six Sigma tools and techniques.
- Overall business improvement.
Who Issues Six Sigma Certification?
Six Sigma Certification is mainly conducted by ASQ, CSSC, and IASSC.
What is ASQ?
The American Society for Quality, also known as ASQ, offers 18 different certifications for people of different intellect. The organization mainly provides Yellow Belt, Green Belt, Black Belt, and Master Black Belt certificates.
Candidates applying for ASQ certifications can save money by becoming a member. The cost varies between $29 and $159 per year, depending on whether you are joining at the Student, Associate, or Full level.
The following table shows the exam fee structure of ASQ certifications:
| Exam | Fee (member) | Fee (nonmember) | Retake Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| ASQ Yellow Belt | $244 | $394 | $184 |
| ASQ Green Belt | $438 | $299 | $239 |
| ASQ Black Belt | $538 | $388 | $338 |
| ASQ Master Black Belt* | $2,229 | $2,074 | $2,229 (for member) / $2,074 (non-member) |
*A candidate who is applying for Master Black Belt also needs to pay $650 (or $495 in the case of members) for the portfolio review.
What is the IASSC certification?
IASSC, or The International Association for Six Sigma Certification, is a professional association dedicated to growing and enhancing the standards across the Lean Six Sigma community. However, IASSC never provides any training, mentoring, or coaching. It only conducts the Six Sigma certificate exam for a candidate.
Certifications offered by IASSC are:
- Black Belt
- Green Belt
- Yellow Belt
Candidates applying for Yellow Belt certification pay $195.00, while the Green Belt certification, which is an advanced course, costs $295, and to achieve Black Belt you need to pay $395.00.
What is CSSC?
The Council for Six Sigma Certification (CSSC) is an official industry standard of Six Sigma accreditation for getting the Six Sigma certification and training.
The primary objective of this course is to ensure that the person can learn the complete Six Sigma certification knowledge. The professional should be able to achieve the minimum standard of proficiency to become a Six Sigma professional.
The Council for Six Sigma Certification offers the following courses:
- White Belt Certification
- Yellow Belt Certification
- Green Belt Certification
- Black Belt Certification
- Master Black Belt Certification
A candidate can apply for the basic White Belt course for free. To get Yellow Belt, they need to pay $79, for Green Belt $119, and $159 to get Black Belt certification.
How to Get Six Sigma Certificate?
To achieve a Six Sigma certificate, a candidate should be able to meet the experience requirement, show his or her competency for the skill applied, and finally pass a written certification exam.
The written exam is mostly multiple choice, which increases in allotted time and difficulty at each certification level.
For example, the Yellow Belt exam may take 90 minutes. A Black Belt may take four hours. The hands-on portion of certification testing may need you to complete one or more quality project management projects with signed affidavits.
Who Needs to Attend Six Sigma Certification Training?
Some of the professionals for whom this training is considered extremely relevant are:
- Quality control professionals
- Process improvement professionals
- Production managers
- Process control specialists
- Frontline and factory supervisors
- Management professionals such as HR
- IT and Finance Engineers
- Business Analysts
Six Sigma Current Job Prospects
The market for Six Sigma professionals is very healthy. Job portal sites like Simply Hired and Indeed.com show more than 2,500 open positions for Six Sigma Green Belt Certified and around 3,000 for Black Belt. The number is much lower for Yellow Belt professionals. Master Black Belts also have around 1,000 job postings every day.
On the salary front, data from PayScale and Glassdoor indicate that in the U.S.A. the average annual salary for a Yellow Belt Six Sigma Certified professional is around $53,901 and Green Belt is $42,053. A Black Belt can earn around $90,000, and a Master Black Belt averages $119,000, and sometimes more.
