101 Things Every Six Sigma Black Belt Should Know
1. In general, a Six Sigma Black Belt should be quantitatively 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 these goals.
5. The Six Sigma Black Belt 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 been accomplished.
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 sigma levels (e.g., three sigma firms report 25% COPQ).
11. 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).
12. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to design, test, and analyze customer surveys.
13. 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.
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 value of 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 present value and future value 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 choose among 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 table of 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,
the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to compute the time to completion
for the project, the earliest completion times, the latest completion
times and the slack times. He should also be able to identify which
tasks are on the critical path.
27. Give cost and time data for project tasks, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to compute
the cost of normal and crash schedules and the minimum total cost
schedule.
28. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be familiar with the basic principles of benchmarking.
29. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be familiar with the limitations of benchmarking.
30. Given an organization chart and a listing of team members, process owners, and sponsors, the Six
Sigma Black Belt should be able to identify projects with a low probability
of success.
31. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to identify measurement scales of various metrics (nominal,
ordinal, etc).
32. Given a metric on a particular scale, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to determine if a particular
statistical method should be used for analysis.
33. Given a properly collected set of data, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to perform a
complete measurement system analysis, including the calculation of
bias, repeatability, reproducibility, stability, discrimination (resolution)
and linearity.
34. Given the measurement system metrics, the Six Sigma Black Belt should know whether or not a given
measurement system should be used on a given part or process.
35. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know the difference between computing sigma from a data set
whose production sequence is known and from a data set whose production
sequence is not known.
36. Given the results of an AIAG Gage R&R study, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to
answer a variety of questions about the measurement system.
37. Given a narrative description of “as-is” and “should-be” processes, the Six
Sigma Black Belt should be able to prepare process maps.
38. Given a table of raw data, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to prepare a frequency tally
sheet of the data, and to use the tally sheet data to construct a
histogram.
39. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to compute the mean and standard deviation from a grouped
frequency distribution.
40. Given a list of problems, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to construct a Pareto Diagram
of the problem frequencies.
41. Given a list which describes problems by department, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to
construct a Crosstabulation and use the information to perform a Chi-square
analysis.
42. Given a table of x and y data pairs, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to determine if
the relationship is linear or non-linear.
43. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know how to use non-linearity’s to make products or processes
more robust.
44. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to construct and interpret a run chart when given a
table of data in time-ordered sequence. This includes calculating
run length, number of runs and quantitative trend evaluation.
45. When told the data are from an exponential or Erlang distribution the Six Sigma Black Belt should
know that the run chart is preferred over the standard X control chart.
46. Given a set of raw data the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to identify and compute two
statistical measures each for central tendency, dispersion, and shape.
47. Given a set of raw data, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to construct a histogram.
48. Given a stem & leaf plot, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to reproduce a sample
of numbers to the accuracy allowed by the plot.
49. Given a box plot with numbers on the key box points, the Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to
identify the 25th and 75th percentile and the median.
50. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know when to apply enumerative statistical methods, and when
not to.
