What Six Sigma Jobs are and How to Qualify for Them

Some of the best employment and job opportunities for those who qualify are Six Sigma jobs. These career jobs are not jobs with high turnover rates; they are jobs that the people who are hired for them are anticipated to keep with the same company for at least several years and perhaps the rest of their working careers.

Beginning as an engineer, devised system for improving the manufacturing process at Motorola, Six Sigma now has become a data-driven method designed to eliminate defects from any process of manufacturing, supply chain, financial transactions, and anything else. The name comes from the fact that there are six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit.

In Six Sigma, statistics are used to quantitatively describe how efficiently and effectively a process is performing. A process has become Six Sigma when it does not yield more than 3.4 defects per one million opportunities. A "defect" is anything that is outside of customer specifications, while an "opportunity" is the total quantity of chances for there to be a defect in the given process. Six Sigma calculators are used to calculate the efficiency of a process to see if it is Six Sigma.



Employment in Six Sigma jobs has to do with providing leadership. People who have Six Sigma job opportunities are those, who are trained, or open to being trained for a process that is going to use Six Sigma. This is a mixture of on the job training and lessons given or derived from Motorola's Six Sigma Academy. Different degrees of leadership achievement are designated by figurative belt colors mirroring those of advancement in many martial arts. The top leaders are those who become Black Belts and Master Black Belts.

Six Sigma Black Belts are top managers for a given department in a company using Six Sigma. They are responsible for developing, implementing, and leading what are called "Lean/Six Sigma programs" within their respective department or division at a company. Black Belts need to understand how to partner with other managers and leaders in their division and with the overall company leadership to implement business critical strategic initiatives that for many companies have a global business.

The responsibilities and duties of the Black Belt are likely to include:

• Developing architecture, for Lean/Six Sigma improvement process.
• Delivering the Lean/Six Sigma training for participating employees and ensuring the consistency of the core training.
• Creating a business culture dedicated to continuous improvement, uncovering opportunities, for implementing strategies, and tools to strengthen that culture.
• Managing with orientation toward project delivery and financial expectations.
• Educating and coaching employees into the roles of change agents with Lean/Six
• Sigma methodologies.
• Taking initiative in leading high quality Lean/Six Sigma business improvement.
• Communicating clearly to the executive management the status of the continuous improvement projects, and partnering with executive management leaders, "project champions", and process owners in developing a portfolio of continuous improvement projects that are aligned with the goals and objectives of the company.
• Acting as the Lean/Six Sigma technical content expert while creating organizational sustainability of departmental process improvement knowledge and strategies strengthened by complex and high-profile performance measurement and management metrics.
• Maintaining compliance with corporate governance standards (Corporate SOPs, Sarbanes-Oxley, FDA Class III guidance, and so on.)
  

The educational and personal requirements to qualify one for a Six Sigma Black Belt job are likely to include:

• A Bachelor of Science or Master of Science university degree.
• Proficiency with Lean/Six Sigma which was acquired through the Academy training and/or on the job training and work experiences, including experience with a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt.
• Some years' experience applying of Lean/Six Sigma tools and methods likely including Lean, DMAIC (Design-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control), and DFSS (Design for Six Sigma).
• Demonstrable analytical skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication abilities.
• Potent interpersonal and influencing skills with demonstrable team leadership and relationship skills.
• Being highly result oriented and possessing the capability for effecting change in a fast -paced work environment.
• Being process-oriented and understanding concepts like process mapping, analysis, and value mapping.
• Understanding high-level management skills, including requirement gathering, Analyzing, design, and production planning, testing, implementation, and reporting.
• Being familiar with compliance, audit, and Quality System process requirements.
  

Six Sigma management jobs are more complex than most of the usual management or leadership jobs. People can be trained in Six Sigma without becoming Black Belts, but needless to say the lower level jobs like Green Belts do not bring the same income or the same personal satisfaction for those who have the leadership ability to get on to the higher levels. Six Sigma Black Belts have to be leaders of people, scientifically oriented in their mind set, and life coaches. The approach taken to management is not disrespectful of people's feelings—in fact quite the opposite—but it has to be ruthlessly efficient. Six Sigma is customer-oriented management in the end.

Six Sigma Black Belts earn an average of $82,000 a year in the U.S., 28% more money than the average compensation for all jobs in all industries.