r/SixSigma

I am proud to announce that I was able to pass the AISSC BB exam on my first attempt. I know there is a lot of confusion about what Six Sigma certification is valued and I wanted to give my perspective on things.

ASQ is the best SS certification I feel because it includes actual project knowledge. However, there are many of us that don’t work for companies where our six sigma projects were valued or promoted enough that the company would want to foot the bill or even managers supporting the validation process. I opted for IASSC because it is the next best thing. It does cover significant theoretical knowledge if you compare it to cssc and is widely known to be better. I realized that re-certification for them is a drag as cssc doesn’t require that but I figured if my goal is to not have just a paper, I might as well learn the rigorous material so I can apply this knowledge and help others.

The resource that genuinely helped me the most is IASSC The Blackbelt standard on Amazon. It explained the concepts in the most logical way and the question difficulty was very close to the actual exam.

Let me know if you have any questions or need more details. I’ll try to help.

I originally took Six Sigma classes on LinkedIn Learning about five years ago to learn the basics. I then completed an official online course through a major university that my company paid for.

My boss has been encouraging me to take the ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt exam, so I started studying intensively about five months ago. I’ve been putting in serious time nearly every weekend. I thought I had the fundamentals down pretty well — especially after using various AI chatbots to reinforce concepts like c-charts versus u-charts.

However, I recently purchased three official ASQ practice exams. I scored a 66 on the first, a 69 on the second, and after a couple more months of study, a 50 on the third. I’m feeling pretty frustrated. I’m no genius, but I do have a STEM degree from a respectable college and scored in the low 1,300s on the SAT back in 1990. What am I doing wrong?

One thing I’ve noticed is that many questions on the official ASQ exams cover material I don’t remember seeing in any class or AI sessions. I’m also getting tripped up by questions where two answers seem plausible, and I consistently pick the wrong one.

Should I consider taking the Green Belt exam instead? Is it significantly easier than the Black Belt? I don’t want to take the exam and fail, but I’m also worried about what my boss will think when I tell him I keep bombing the practice tests.

Thanks for listening and for any suggestions. I’m pretty discouraged right now.

Long time lurker, first time actually writing one of these out instead of just reading answering to other people's war stories.

About twenty years ago I was running ops for a small manufacturer... a family business, second-generation owner, the kind of place where growth happened by throwing bodies at problems until it stopped working. One day the owner comes to me and says a major customer is going to walk if we don't get their orders out in three days. We had over 90 orders overdue, some by 20+ days. Average lead time from order to ship was 24 days! adding people had gotten us this far and it wasn't getting us any further.

That's when it actually hit me. we weren't too busy to fix the process. We were too busy because we'd never fixed the process. Two different things and I'd been treating them as the same thing for years.

Walked the floor properly for probably the first time with fresh eyes. One line was semi-organized. Everything else was chaos. No standard way to do anything. Nobody could tell you on any given day how many units we'd made, what got scrapped, what was actually open and due. We were going by whoever yelled loudest on the phone that week.

Here's the part that surprised me: we didn't need a black belt or a consultant to start. We started 5S in the one area that was already down for a broken machine, because we didn't have the luxury of stopping a healthy line to go "do lean" at it. Just cleaned it, organized it, gave everything a place. It looked almost embarrassingly simple compared to what I thought "lean transformation" was supposed to look like.

That embarrassingly simple thing is what got us moving. Within about aprox. 7 months we went from 24-day lead times to 97%+ on-time in 3 days or less... because a clean, standardized starting point is the only thing that makes the next problem visible. You can't see a deviation from a standard that doesn't exist yet.

The thing nobody tells you when you're starting out: you don't need the whole transformation mapped before you touch anything. You need one honest look at the floor and the willingness to start where you are, not where the textbook says you should be.

Curious what actually got other people's transformations moving

was it a crisis like mine, or did someone deliberately choose to start before things got that bad? And if it was a crisis, what was the first thing you touched?

Hey everyone,

Just to let you all know I passed the ASQ CSSGB test! I posted here a couple months ago to document the begining of my "journey".

I'm a physician and my background is in engineering/math so I was initially drawn by the amount of stats in the exam. I also have an MBA (which proved quite useful with all the BS management terms).

Resources:

- CSSGB Handbook 2nd edition: didn't open it until exam time. Some questions are copied word for word from the handbook. I'm glad I bought the 2nd edition for about $10 on eBay. I don't think the 3rd edition is needed. Did watch a few Lean videos that came on the CD ahead of time.

- CSSGB QCI Primer: QCI is caput so had to buy a used copy on eBay. The only resource I read from start to finish, mostly to do all the problems that come with it. Really liked the way the authors wrote the manual: to the point but still with enough detail on the parts that require it. Not a fully complete resource; some questions I could only find the answer for on the Handbook.

- Udemy Quality Guru's CSSGB course: paid less than $20 for the course and the practice exams. I commute about 2 hours/day (bus/train) so I had time to watch most videos/classes. Helpful but not absolutely essential.

- ASQ CSSGB Study Guide: 2nd and 3rd editions. Practice, practice, practice.

Exam time impressions:

- Some people gave the advice to do the easy/direct questions first, skip the ones you're not sure, skip calculations and then keep reiterating. Well, I can't do it. The moment I hit a question I didn't immediately remember the answer for, and I knew it was in the Handbook somewhere, say, "team performance stages", I went right after it. It's a risky strategy but I thought I should just plow throught the exam until the end and *then* look back. I had 1 full hour left when I finished it.
- Breaks: took one break at the 2h mark and another at the 3h mark. When I returned from the 2nd brake I answered the 3-4 flagged questions I had and called it a day.

- Barely *any* calculations; very disappointing. I trained all the stats calculations like a maniac -- basically just remembering what I learned at my MBA (more than 25 years ago) -- and I didn't use it once. What's the point of making a huge deal out of it if it is not in the exam???

- Some questions annoyed the hell out of me simply 'cause there are not grounded in evidence whatsover and really depend on one's personal experience. Most of them are managerial/leadership type of questions.

Learning points:

- "Remember your training": if you went over about 1000 DMAIC questions, and scored more than 80% on average, you'll be fine.

- The certification is nice, but nothing beats actual experience in running/leading DMAIC projects. All these tools and techniques are pretty cool but are absolutely meaningless if you're not actively using them and learning from them.

On the CSSBB (hopefully in the next 12 months)!

Thanks for all the answered questions and provided encouragement!

TL;DR: passed ASQ CSSGB. QCI Primer and ASQ Study Guides as main resources. There's plenty of time to finish the exam and there's no clear winning strategy on how to tackle it. Quantitative questions were nowhere to be found. Get certified is nice but practical experience with SS/DMAIC is absolutely paramount.

I recently passed the ASQ CSSGB certification exam. Is there a way to work on projects remotely to gain experience for a PMP certification or a BB? Or would pursuing an ASQ QE certification be more relevant for me?

I work in local government operations sector (non IT/ software) in the US.

I want to continue working in the sector but look forward to deepening and broadening my knowledge of applying Lean and DMAIC concepts to projects related to urban infrastructure and service provision.

Hello everyone,

I work in Construction/Building Materials industry and I would like to get six sigma certification. I came across CSSC and path 2, multiple exams, seems too good and doable. I think I can complete green & black belt within 6 months. I am PMP certified and I always thought Black belt is way difficult than this.

The question is, does employer care more about where you did your certification from? If so, is CSSC considered? Does anyone have experience with CSSC?

Honesty up front: I'm not a quality engineer. I'm digging into the FMEA tooling space because the gap between "just use Excel" and "buy expensive enterprise software" looks real to me — and before I form strong opinions I'd rather hear it from people who actually live it.

Here's what I think I'm seeing from the outside — tell me where I'm wrong:

- Excel is free and universal, but seems to fall apart on version control, linking failure modes to the control plan, and the whole thing ends up living in one moderator's head.

- The dedicated tools (Teamcenter, IQ-RM / IQ-Software, Plato e1ns) clearly do more, but the license cost looks brutal for a smaller supplier and the learning curve looks steep enough that you need someone whose whole job is driving the tool.

For those of you who've actually made the jump:

- What finally pushed you off Excel — an audit finding, leadership, scale, something else?

- Did the software actually fix the version / knowledge-in-one-head problem, or did it just move it somewhere new?

- If you could go back, would you make the same call?

Not selling anything — genuinely trying to understand the reality before I build on assumptions.

I’d like to get green belt certified for Lean Six Sigma. I am looking for a UK based self study training provider. I am happy with getting the CSSC as I am in HR operations and don’t think really it will add any value if I spend more money to get IASSC etc. Budget is below £500: Any suggestions?

I’ve been learning Six Sigma recently and noticed that concepts like Pareto, 5 Whys, and process mapping feel complex until you actually apply them. For those who have experience: What helped you really understand Six Sigma? Real projects? Examples? Certifications? Would love your thoughts.

I’ve been exploring Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, and basic statistics recently, and I noticed that a lot of concepts feel complex at first but become much easier once you see real-world examples.

For me, things like Pareto (80/20), 5 Whys, and process mapping started making more sense when I applied them to everyday problems. Curious to know from others: What helped you understand Six Sigma or Lean concepts more easily?

Was it: - Real-life examples? - Practical projects? - Certifications or courses? - Or something else? Would love to hear your experiences.

I just finished the lean six sigma green belt course from simplilearn. I went through all the classes, did a project, and passed the exam. I know technically the class completion doesn't give me a true green belt certificate from IASSC, but do employers even care?

I asked a mentor about this at work and she said that plenty of people just take a IASSC certified green belt course, pass, and choose not to take the actual online exam through IASSC to get the certificate, especially since it's something you have to pay to renew. This mentor recommended I just stop since I passed the class and put it on my resume. Feels weird though, the certificate literally says "This is a letter confirming course attendance only and is not a document demonstrating or certifying the achievement of any qualification in the subject matter of the training course". Is this the kind of thing people get when they finish the course through a college?

A little background: I currently work in FinOps and naturally gravitate toward process improvement, finding inefficiencies, and solving organizational problems. I'm looking to make a career pivot from finance to operations excellence/process improvement. My primary goal in getting a LSSGB is building real skills, not just adding a credential to put on my resume. This has me leaning more toward an instructor-led program vs self-paced.

I'm specifically looking for a program that offers:

-Strong coaching and mentorship

-Real project support

-Instructor access and feedback

-A hands-on learning experience

I have no problem investing in a quality program if it's worth it, but I don't want to spend thousands of dollars on a certificate with little practical value.

So like the title says, if you had to do your Green Belt over, which program would you choose? Not just instructor vs self-paced, but also specifically where.

Hi everyone,
I’ve been working as a Reliability Engineer (Quality Department) of a semiconductor company.

To improve my skills & for long term career growth , I’m considering earning a Six Sigma Green Belt certification.

I have been researching different recognized credentialing bodies for six sigma certification . From what I’ve found, ASQ, CSSC, and IASSC seem to be among the most commonly recommended options.

I am not sure which one to choose.

For those who work in semiconductor industry,

1. Does the certification provider actually matter in the industry? Like ASQ is more preferred than others?

2. Have any of these certifications helped you with promotions, job opportunities, or career advancement?

Thanks!