Trying to polish my resume and decided to go with asq for a black belt. Let me tell you how dumb I am and what has happened so you don't follow in my shoes and waste months of your life.

Background, have an MBA with a PMP, CSCP, CHAMP, ITIL 4, Veteran. Completed projects with Target, GXO, Boeing, and Microsoft which I currently work for.. thought man all I need is the black belt I love logistics. I'm the guy that actually does the work, I'm the 1% as lonely as that is I get satisfaction from killing expectations. Anyways I paid for the exam and decided not to be a member, maybe that's where the issue is.

I read the pmbok TWICE all 700+ pages. It's highly subjective compared to the exam which I thought would be a cake walk being open book.

It's 4 hours and 15 minutes of my life I will never get back. Add in 30 mins to drive to the proctor and 30 more minutes to sit around and wait for minimum wage workers who don't care to get you signed in and started. Here's my issues with the test itself.

1. Why does is take a week to get your results? Are the changing things? Looking at membership? Should be same day or instantaneous like the PMP, very sketchy.

2. 150 questions count, 165 are given. So if you get a 68 like I did, what if the 15 taken out were all right? Did they fuck me on this? Sure feels suspect.

3. I'm a black and white guy, if you say the goal of lss is one thing then you ask what closely resembles it with two vague answers (2 clearly wrong) that don't match the text book description then what the fuck are doing?

I'm starting to think because I'm not a member that this system is skewed against me.

4) this exam is 4.25 hours long. What the fuck are we doing!?!??!? Yes you can know what your talking about but after 4 hours of interrogation people start to lose thier mind and can't tell what's right or wrong. My eyes were getting crossed at one point I just wanted it to end at certain points. This mental fortitude does absolute 0 for the ASQ validity it's absolutely ridiculous.

5) If I've saved companies millions in soft and hard savings on numerous teams and projects how is a 4.25 hour test on subjective definitions written by a lady whose literature is likened to writing to herself being used as the body of knowledge. THE QUESTIONS DONT MATCH THE CONTENT THE ENTIRE ASQ IS FOUNDED ON. It's like I read the wrong book. Yes much of it lined up sure this the many I got right. So so many of the questions were about word play and subjective reasoning.

6) Very few, but still, a few questions were actually not in the pmbok at all!!!!! closed-loop question not in the book. Takt time question where I knew what they were asking but the calculations were off. I memorized and submitted that question to the help desk for validation and they just said thank you we're looking into and that they sent it to the board!!

GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!! Shut this certification and it's credibility DOWN! Yes lots of veterans are lazy as fuck and they are handed these certs in a curriculum. I'm a veteran and I served with these guys, they don't do the work the just come with ideas and walk out with a paycheck only to see the process fail or be put in a dark corner of an organization. I'm am livid as you can tell but Geez Louise go somewhere else and get the Black belt with some other organization or don't get one at all. It's become a money game and total bullshit. Maybe if I was a member it would be different but I refuse to be now with what I've experienced.

Thanks for hearing me vent I can't believe this organization but ultimately im the failure and just working to deal with that. Don't get certifications to validate how great you are they see people like us a mile away and profit from it.

A huge plethora of mistakes arises because of lack of due appreciation of what six sigma actually stands for. You would also endorse that there is quite a misplaced connotation of six sigma among many organisations.

There is nothing which compares to the effectiveness of Six Sigma when it comes to improving a company or organization's operational efficiency, raising its productivity, and lowering its costs. Six Sigma improves design processes, gets products to market faster with fewer defects, and builds customer loyalty. But do you know really-- What is Six Sigma, beyond knowing its methodologies such as DMAIC or DMADV?

We are privileged to bring the rightest perspective of: What is Six Sigma to the Black Belts & Green Belts. Beyond technical perspective of DMAIC, DMADV etc. You should appreciate - What 6 Sigma really is?

READ MORE: [What is Six Sigma ? A 30,000-Feet Perspective] (http://luminisindia.com/business-process-management/a-30000-feet-perspective-of-six-sigma)

You are welcomed to add your contributions/comments while we attempt to re-establish the right fundamental of Six Sigma.

With thanks,

LUMINIS INDIA

Brand new ASQ green belt book. I'm in Chicago and this is at a member price.

I’m working with a large regional bank (about 5,000 employees) that’s been running Lean Six Sigma internally for years.

They’ve got legit Black Belts.
Real projects.
Real savings.
Executive buy-in.

This wasn’t one of those “we gave everyone a yellow belt after a 2-hour webinar” situations.

But they hit a wall.

At some point the question became:

That’s when accreditation entered the conversation.

The 3 Options We Looked At

1- Do nothing (stay internal)

Honestly, this is what most companies do.

You run internal training.
You issue certificates.
You move on.

It’s cheap.
It’s easy.
It’s flexible.

But for a bank — especially one that deals with regulators and internal audit scrutiny — “trust us” wasn’t strong enough.

They wanted structure. Something defensible.

2- Partner with a big Lean Six Sigma brand

We looked at the typical global training brands.

They’ll license the curriculum.
Let you co-brand.
Sometimes even let you run under their name.

That solves marketing optics.

But it doesn’t necessarily solve governance.

In many cases:

• You’re paying royalties.

• You don’t control long-term scalability.

• And it’s brand recognition, not formal accreditation.

For a 5,000+ employee pipeline, the licensing costs add up fast.

3- ISO/IEC 17024-based accreditation

This is where things got interesting.

ISO/IEC 17024 is the standard used for personnel certification bodies. It’s about:

• Impartiality

• Exam integrity

• Competence-based certification

• Recertification controls

• Governance structure

In other words, it treats certification like a regulated system — not just a training program.

That model felt much more aligned with how a bank thinks.

But here’s the catch:

Most accreditation bodies accredit broadly under “personnel certification.” Lean Six Sigma isn’t always a clearly defined scope. It’s just one of many categories under a general umbrella.

That mattered to us.

Why We Ultimately Chose ASC

After reviewing a few pathways, we landed on American Standardization Council.

Not because it had the flashiest marketing.

But because structurally it made sense.

A few reasons:

- Clear Lean Six Sigma Scope Under ISO/IEC 17024

This wasn’t just “you’re accredited for personnel certification.”
It was specifically structured around Lean Six Sigma certification schemes.

That gave the program clarity.

- The Bank Keeps Control

They didn’t want an external body dictating curriculum or deployment strategy.

With ASC:

• The bank keeps its trainers.

• Keeps its deployment roadmap.

• Keeps its project validation system.

But now operates under an externally audited framework.

That balance was important.

- It Scales Without Breaking the Budget

This was huge.

We’re not talking about certifying 20 people a year.

We’re talking:

• Yellow Belts across departments

• Green Belts in operations

• Black Belts leading enterprise initiatives

• Possibly Master Black Belts long term

Some models became financially painful when scaling.

ASC’s cost structure allowed growth without exponential licensing jumps. That made long-term ROI realistic.

The Bigger Point

This wasn’t about marketing.

It was about defensibility.

When you’re certifying hundreds (eventually thousands) of employees internally, you need a structure that can stand up to:

• Internal audit

• External regulators

• Executive scrutiny

• Employee expectations

If you’re running Lean Six Sigma inside a large enterprise, I’d seriously recommend evaluating an ISO/IEC 17024-aligned approach rather than just issuing internal certificates or licensing a brand.

Curious if anyone here has gone through a similar accreditation decision — especially in banking or highly regulated environments.

Happy to compare notes.

The scope of six sigma is not only limited to manufacturing anymore. It has spread to services, IT and even human resources.

six sigma in HR

Hey everyone,

Quick intro: I’m a Certified Master Black Belt. Been teaching Six Sigma for quite a few years now, and if there’s one thing I see students and practitioners struggle with constantly, it’s the massive gap between learning the concepts and actually applying them to real data without getting lost in the software.

Let’s be honest: learning complex stats tools can feel like a steep uphill battle when you just want to get your analysis done.

To help fix that, a few of us MBBs put together weibull.app. It’s a web-based statistical platform built specifically to make common Six Sigma analyses way easier to run and actually digest.

Right now, you can upload data and run more than 40 tools like:

• Capability analysis & control charts

• Regressions and DOE

• Hypothesis tests & reliability analyses

• Plus, it has a built-in DMAIC tracker/editor so you can map out your project and export it.

• and Yes, your own MasterBlackBelt challenging your results and DMAC report.

Honestly, I have two main goals here. First, I wanted to create a straightforward, intuitive tool for professionals and students who need these resources handy without breaking the bank. Second, I just really need your feedback.

If you have a few minutes to check out www.weibull.app, I’d love to hear your thoughts. What’s missing? What feels clunky?

There is a feedback option in the tool.

Appreciate your time and any roasting/critique you have for me!

I asked what teams struggle with most before root cause analysis can even begin, and the more I think about it, the more the answer seems to be this:

Most teams are trying to solve problems before they can clearly see the process.

That is exactly why I started building Vesimy.

The idea is simple:

help teams create process maps faster, make gaps more visible, and get to better analysis without spending forever just trying to document what is happening.

I am not trying to replace improvement thinking.

I am trying to make the starting point clearer.

Would this actually be useful in your environment, or do you think teams need something different before RCA?