I earned my white belt today!

In the Lean Six Sigma world, though...so don't worry. We spent all day in a professional development class learning the basics of lean six sigma, and what all is involved in the process. After a brief intro, we were asked to participate in a simulation.

We were all employees at Beltmart, and we each had a job, be it time keeper, customer, supervisor, truck driver, line worker, etc. Our goal was to get orders in from the customer, process them, and deliver them back to the customer, all in two minutes. The first time through, it took an average of 4:40 to deliver a completed project...and not a single one was accurate...obviously a problem.

The next several hours (i.e. the rest of the day) were spent going through the DMAIC (de-may-ic) method in order to solve the problem the six-sigma way. Just in case you are wondering, DMAIC stands for:

• Define the problem
• Measure the baseline
• Analyze the situation
• Improve the system
• Control for changes

After we'd gone through each step, we were asked to implement a new system in order to improve our process. In addition, we were split into two teams. Now, for those of you that don't know, we (well, I) are/am a bit competitive, so the "teams" made it that much more imperative that we do better (we had to win!). Well, it appears we learned SOMETHING because our team's new average time waaaaaas...18.1 seconds! (and ZERO defects in the whole bunch). Impressive, huh? Note, the other team's average time: 21.3 seconds. I believe that calls for a:

MWAHAHA!

(nope, not competitive at all)

So, what does all of this mean? Well, it means that I can put "Lean Six Sigma White Belt" on my resume and that I can now move on to training for the Yellow Belt (if I wanna keep going). But, more importantly, it further differentiates me in the applicant pool and shows that I've taken the initiative to improve my decision making abilities (yay!).

It was possibly the best PD class we've done yet (I really enjoyed it). There were pictures taken...but I don't have them. I'll add them when I find (and subsequently borrow) from those that had cameras.

In other news, it's Friday and tomorrow is the last "home" football game - against UTEP (I use the word "game" lightly). So, since I don't have to be up super early, guess what I'm doing? Blogging and watching Harry Potter while sipping a cup of hot cocoa (with french vanilla, snowman shaped marshmallows). Go ahead, be jealous. It's okay.