The CSSBB Credential and What This Course Is

What a Black Belt does

ASQ (the American Society for Quality) offers a family of Six Sigma certifications. The Certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB) sits above the Green Belt. A Black Belt is usually a full-time or near full-time improvement leader. A Black Belt leads complex, cross-functional projects, coaches Green Belts, uses advanced statistics to find and prove causes, and explains the results to senior managers in business and financial terms.

The difference from a Green Belt is not only "more statistics". A Black Belt is expected to:

• Lead people who do not report to them — team members, process owners and sometimes reluctant managers.
• Link projects to strategy and to money: which projects deserve resources, and what the organisation gains.
• Choose and defend the right analysis — for example, when a nonparametric test is safer than a t-test, or when a fractional factorial design will hide the interaction you need.
• Make results last through control plans, statistical process control (SPC) and process ownership.

What this course is, and what it is not

This course follows the ASQ Six Sigma Green Belt Exam Preparation course and assumes you know the Green Belt material: DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control), basic descriptive statistics, basic control charts and simple hypothesis tests. Each module recaps these points briefly and then goes to Black Belt depth.

The course is organised around ASQ’s published CSSBB Body of Knowledge (BoK). It explains the ideas in plain English, works through calculations step by step and gives you practice questions written for this course. The practice questions are not real exam questions and are not recalled from any exam. They are written in a similar style so that you can practise the thinking the exam asks for.

Eligibility rules, fees, the number of questions, the time allowed, the passing standard and the rules on reference materials can change. Check the current requirements and the current candidate handbook with ASQ before you book. This course does not repeat those details, so that it never gives you an out-of-date rule.