By Sarah Morgan
Lean Six Sigma’s Green Belt certification introduces managers to process improvement, waste minimisation and value maximisation. You don’t need to possess any specific prerequisites to take the Green Belt exam. It is aimed at professionals with a definite interest or need for process improvement techniques in their role.
If this sounds like you, and you’d like to implement Lean Six Sigma’s methodologies in your workplace, the Green Belt certification can be of huge benefit. It teaches you to reduce errors, control costs, streamline processes and improve the success rates of your team’s projects.Below are a list of tips to help you study for the Lean Six Sigma Green Belt exam. These will help you gain as much knowledge and skills as possible whilst preparing for the exam. Follow these study tips and you should have the best possible chance at exam success.
1. Practice questions
The Lean Six Sigma Green Belt exam is in a multiple choice format. Whilst it’s clearly extremely important to gain as much knowledge as you can, try and tailor your exam preparation around the format. Completing numerous practice tests is the best way you can do this, honing your exam technique.
sixsigmastudyguide.com has a broad collection of practice tests, exams and questions from a range of sources. This gives you good variety in the sorts of tests and questions you’re answering, whilst still remaining true to the real thing.
Another website useful for your Lean Six Sigma studies is sixsigmatrainingfree.com. This also has a great selection of resources. This includes practice exams specifically for Green Belt as well as for general Six Sigma study. It also contains a host of other resources that can help you answer any questions or issues that arise during your studies.
2. Use a Lean Six Sigma study guide
There are a wide range of study guides specifically designed to help you study for the Green Belt exam, as you may have seen in our previous post, “10 best books to help you pass your Six Sigma certification”. This post gives you further detail on Lean Six Sigma study guides. However, for your Green Belt exam, either or both of the two below will be sure to help your studies.The “Six SIGMA Green Belt Study Guide: Test Prep and Practice Questions for the Six SIGMA Green Belt Exam” from Trivium Test Prep is the one of the most direct study guides available for the Green Belt exam. It doesn’t include any distractions from what you need to know, whilst still fully explaining every exam topic. The book’s uncomplicated style makes for very efficient and productive studying.
If you don’t learn best through intense study and revision, there is a study guide that can assist you through practical learning for the Green Belt exam. If you’re already trying to implement Lean Six Sigma methodologies in your team or business, the “Lean Six Sigma and Minitab (4th Edition): The Complete Toolbox Guide for Business Improvement” by Quentin Brook, is the book for you. This is designed to give practical advice to people using Lean Six Sigma. Having already sold over 100,000 copies, it helps managers implement process improvement all over the globe. Its features include easy to navigate DMAIC tabs, interactive examples and logical routemaps through the Six Sigma DMAIC flow. 3. Sit a course
The best way to prepare for any certification’s exam, is to sit a course. They are specially designed to give you as much knowledge and skills as possible to pass the exam and to use the methodology in the real business environment. The benefits you receive depend of the type of course you choose to sit. A classroom based course gives you the benefits of an instructor available at all times to answer your questions as well as other students learning at the same pace who you can bounce questions and ideas off.
Firebrand’s accelerated and combined Green and Black belt course gives you 12 hour training days, giving you the most learning time possible in a distraction free environment. You can also learn skills from the Black Belt certification while your Green Belt knowledge is still fresh.
4. Immerse yourself in the methodology
With many topics and exams, an invaluable tip would be to get hands on and learn through your experiences with a trial version of the product or technology. With the Lean Six Sigma methodology, that’s a little trickier. The best alternative though, is to immerse yourself as much as you can in Lean Six Sigma outside of directly studying for your exam.
To do this, you should take advantage of the myriad of websites, blogs and other content available online that gives you information on Lean Six Sigma at a Green Belt level. For example, www.leansixsigmaninja.com is an excellent website created by a Green Belt alumni that breaks down Green Belt in a straightforward and easily digestible fashion. It has a lot of information for “newbies” and explains many of Lean Six Sigma’s tools and terminologies. Getting truly familiar with these will help your learning a great deal going forward.
There are many writers out there blogging about the latest trends and developments in Lean Six Sigma, and specifically the Green Belt’s exam content. Reading and staying current with these can give you a wider understanding of the methodology; how it’s evolving and how your knowledge and skills can be utilised in the real world business environment. Check out the full list of 20 Lean Six Sigma blogs here.
5. Use a Six Sigma Green Belt forum
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| Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at freedigitalphotos.net |
Due to the broad and widely applicable nature of project management there are a wide range of forums and discussions you can find online – all with varying levels of quality. One the best out there, with a large number of contributors and topics is from isixsigma.com. It has a comprehensive range of Lean Six Sigma topics and is nicely divided into topic areas for easy navigation. As with all online forums though, be aware that not everyone is an expert and not all contributions will be applicable or useful.
If you use these five tips, you should give yourself the best possible chance of passing the Lean Six Sigma Green belt exam. Also, learning as much as you can in preparation for the exam, should put you in a great position after the exam to bringing the knowledge you’ve learned into your business, improving processes and reducing errors.
About the Author:
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.
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