Six Sigma: Define and Measure

First and foremost, I want to convey my utmost gratitude, praise, and appreciation to Holly Ott for her skillful execution and expertise conducting the course. She made the course interesting as an online course can be. Even for someone who has been out of college for 30+ years, she made it understandable. Not that I did not need to do some significant scratching of the head and dig up some supplemental information, but I did learn a great deal.

The material presented and knowledge (yes, even my old grey hair head can still retain some information) will be used as I work on implementing a new process at my company. The process is tied to the Request for Maintenance Action (RMA). As a manufacturer and distributer of ground based and naval radar systems, the process for customers to return parts that fail in the field was cumbersome and chaotic at best. Additionally, our customers were not very happy with the Turn Around Time (TAT) of receiving their repaired or replaced parts back. These times often exceeded 3 to 6 months. Unless previously agreed to for specific parts, this was completely unacceptable. Furthermore, there are some parts that are failing on a more regular basis. Thus, quality measurements and improvements were in need. Capturing the metrics of the failure rates will drive the organization to reevaluate the design or supplier and hopefully foster improvements for future system deliveries. The data collected will also be used to drive obsolescence, FMEA and FMECA analyses.

The process is somewhat complicated as there are customer reports involved that need to be evaluated, shipping and trade compliance concerns, supplier and vendor interactions and agreed to evaluation pricing, customer purchase orders, vendor purchase orders, work authorizations, etc. etc.

I have just completed the process mapping flow (with help from what I learned in the class) and have received comments back from the review. I have also been working with our Oracle subject matter experts to develop the process tool and alerts to be used. There is a great deal of historical data that also needs to be captured and input into Oracle. From there, once the process is finalized and all stakeholders are in agreement on the use of the tool. I will develop training slide decks for the requisite responsible individuals.

My ultimate goal along with the quality organization is to see a significant reduction in TAT as well as capture statistics on what parts are failing the most, under what conditions, and work with engineering and our supply chain to either modify or redesign or seek alternate suppliers that can meet the failure rate requirements. Everything we work on is driven by Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR). The limits of which are set by customer requirements. And yes, this goes down to something as small as a connector to something as large as a big drive gear.

In closing, while my company does have some process and methods for capturing this critical data for RMAs, it is, as I said dispersed and un- organized. I am confident that what I have learned in the course will help me significantly as I drive the process and help my company achieve a better RMA status and less customer complaints.

I look forward to taking more edX courses and will certainly look for others from TUM if Holly is teaching.

Sincerely,

Elias A. Elias

My name is Rony Tabari and I am from Indonesia, I am currently undertaking a role as an Operations Improvement Advisor for Phu Bia Mining (PBM) with operations in Laos as one of the producing assets for PanAust in South East Asia.

First of all, I would like to sincerely express my gratitude and appreciation to Professor Holly Ott with her skills and expertise for bringing such an excellent series of lectures, and to all the team from Technische Universität München (TUM) and edX for the well packaged courses. I would also like to thank to PanAust through my Operations Improvement team, for the opportunity, support, motivation for me to experience the study to enhance my professional skills and potential career advancement.

The course with TUM via edX has been a quite refresher for me as it has been more than 15 years since I took statistics as a subject in my college and applied some of the tools and calculations during my previous work as a management consultant in various client industries, such as measuring and prioritising defects and setting up improvement measurement baselines using regression to calculate savings.

There are 3 specific things that I have been learning so far from the course that have been adding more value to the extent of the knowledge and skills I have at the moment :

• The knowledge of the need to understand the Voice of Customer, and to convert into Critical to Quality measurement as per Lean principles, would also be the implementation of a ‘Pull System’.
• The knowledge in regards to statistics which equips me with advanced capability for data processing and more accurate decision making.
• The use of Six Sigma with its DMAIC phases to be able to define, formulate and process the information about the problem added with data to be analysed as proof of process improvements. Moreover, this approach has also been formulated in terms of the project approach that will be useful as project guidelines.

Currently, during my time to deliver high quality of work with PBM, I have been on the task to engage people from different departments and levels to train, to coach and to support them to improve the process of their work to be easier, better, quicker, cheaper and safe using the Lean principles, including to use some of the problem solving tools for projects that require us to define the problem and key measurements.

Six sigma has been one of the selected training course which will equip me with useful knowledge and tools especially when we are involved in the data driven decision making process for the project. And thus we will have a more accurate decision from the data to be made and not just simply estimate.
In the mining industry, more specifically, there have been many project opportunities that involve and require data processing for improving the decision making process and actions; such as recovery, liner wear rates, inventories, and so on.

I am looking forward to continue my study via TUM and edX for the next series of Six Sigma courses to complete the Yellow Belt certification. I also look forward to contribute my skills and study experience to seek the Six Sigma Green Belt level through undertaking process improvement projects with PBM, applying the lessons, practicing the tools and sharing the success stories with my team.

Thank you again for the excellent courses.

Sincerely,

Rony Tabari

The course content is very much helpful and informative. The course really helps to gain insight into the lean production and six sigma. The concepts are very much latest and related with industry.
The course has helped me a lot for securing the internship at Schaeffler Company. The material has proved to be very much useful with the project I am working in Schaeffler.

The instructor, Dr. Holly Ott, was one of the best I had ever experienced, coming from an in-class and online university-level course perspective. Not only were her lectures engaging and informative but she showed a genuine interest in the subject matter. She went above and beyond what I would expect from any prof and in addition to providing a great portion of the lectures herself, was also a frequent poster in the discussion forums. The guest lecturers that were brought in were world-class experts and it showed. They were able to explain increasingly difficult concepts using basic examples and to me, that is a sign of someone who really knows what they’re talking about!

I also wanted to mention that taking good notes in this course is a must since there are so many different concepts being thrown at you that unless you take good notes now, you may be a little bit confused later on. I still sometimes re-read my notes or re-watch a video to get a better grasp on a topic and see if and how I can implement it at work and in my daily life.

Thank you, Professor Ott, all of the guest lecturers and TAs, and the rest of the TUM team that worked tirelessly to bring this MOOC to us!

Hello,

My name is Faisal Enad S Alenezi. As I know from my experience from a bachelor's degree Dr Holly Ott, was one of the best I had ever experienced coming from an in-class and online university-level course perspective. Furthermore, I want to convey my utmost gratitude, praise, and appreciation to Holly Ott for her skilful execution and expertise conducting the course. She made the course interesting as an online course can be.

Six Sigma projects are processed along with the phases of the DMAIC cycle (DEFINE-MEASURE-ANALYSE-IMPROVE-CONTROL). And each phase covers a set of chronologically interlinked rational and statistical tools. In the DEFINE phase we answer the question:

What is the problem?

First, a product or service, that deviates from the requirements must be identified as a potential for improvement. Customer requirements are then prioritized as a basis for defining the primary problems of the product or service. The specified customer requirements and the size of the problems help to define the business case for the project.

Finally, the scope and objectives of the project are defined, and a project team is formed with subject matter experts, as supporters for the project.

After defining the problems, we look for their triggering causes in the MEASURE phase.

To identify these negative influences on the problem, the as-is process is mapped and inspected first. The next step is to formulate hypotheses that reflect the relationship between triggering influences and the problem.

In the ANALYSE phase we answer the question:

What are the root causes of the influences on the problem?

At first, the measured data are evaluated graphically. Next, the process capability is calculated and – most important – the hypotheses to identify the significant influences are tested.

In the IMPROVE phase, we answer the question: What is the solution?

At first, solutions are developed to eliminate, adjust or circumvent the identified root causes. Risks and resistances against these solutions are then identified and the solutions are adapted, to put them into practice.

In the CONTROL phase, we answer the question:

How can we ensure the sustainability of our improvements?

First, the degree of improvement is calculated on a statistical basis and the achieved financial benefit is calculated. A Process-Management-Plan is then installed, with control charts to monitor the process and with countermeasures for deviations that occur. New standards for the process are developed and communicated. Finally, the project is handed over to the process owner. This means each Six Sigma project is based on a process.

Thank you, Professor Ott, all of the guest lecturers and TAs, and the rest of the TUM team that worked tirelessly to bring this MOOC to us!

My name is Katerina Christopoulos and I have an MEng degree in Mechanical Engineering. I am currently between jobs (I have just moved to Munich in pursuit of my next role - this was a great coincidence!) and having worked as a Project Quality Engineer in my previous employment, I decided to enhance my Quality skillset and dive into the world of Six Sigma.

Before enrolling, I had never taken-on an online course and had my doubts about how successful one might be in truly keeping me engaged. For this reason, I must start off by showing my gratitude to Professor Holly Ott, our lecturer, who made sure to explain concepts in detail and gave us deeper insights on every topic covered through her expertise in the field. Secondly, the structure of the course was easy to follow and the short videos kept me focussed and motivated to continue learning. Thank you to TUM for offering this course online and to edX for supporting the Professional Certificate package.

The methods/theories which stood out the most for me in the course, in terms of envisioning myself utilising them in an improvement project and getting the most valuable data out of, were:

1) Kano Model Theory and Questionnaire - this really allows us to focus on attributes that matter to the customer and ones that can truly differentiate a product from its competition, whilst not wasting energy on non-value-added changes. This helps in TIME and COST saving by weighing/prioritising the customer attributes to narrow down the focus.

2) The Central Limit Theorem - I believe was useful because despite the nature of our population distribution (which for many cases will not be normally distributed), this theory demonstrated that by taking a large number of random samples from the population and creating a sampling distribution, this will tend towards a normal distribution (the larger the sample size, the clearer the trend). This is valuable because the data obtained from a normal distribution can be converted to very useful information, such us the process capability and performance (Cp, Cpk, Cpm, Pp and Ppk).

3) FMEA - I've previously performed DFMEAs in a design process and have found this to be a great help in mitigating risk! By identifying failure modes, in a product or process, and quantifying their impact through Severity, Occurrence and Detectability, we are able to prevent potential detrimental failures before a product reaches the customer. This is a great way for a business to be PROACTIVE rather than reactive and suffering the consequences of a preventable situation.

I'm very excited to continue with my Six Sigma journey to achieving a Yellow Belt Certification and am looking forward to applying my new tools to real improvement projects!

Thanks again for this excellent course!

Sincerely,

Katerina Christopoulos

The professor Holly Ott understands what a S.M.A.R.T (specific measurable attainable realistic time) quality objective actually is for a each of her lectures. Furthermore she follows the 3E( FEMA Reinforcing the perception of fair treatment 3E) of communication which most people fail to do in lectures. Some students do not give her enough credit for how she sets up her lectures and her practice question are very good preparations for her quizzes/homework assignments. I have seen a lot of professors in my lifetime none of them of them were ever actually good, very intelligent people that mostly are perceived as critics, but none of them understood the word "Be Humble" while in a lecture especially when you are meeting your students for the first time. I have only met one other professor like her in my lifetime, that was professor Allen Claus who taught me to love organic chemistry again just by sticking to the quality objective, unfortunately I was not able to stay that field, but my point is, considered this Professional Certificate by TUMX

I took this course to understand the terminology of lean production and Six sigma, it has been very helpful in my day to day tasks, especially the fish bone diagrams and the five 5 WHYS that I constantly use to solve problem statements.

For example, if you have never heard the acronym DPMO or 8D I suggest you take this course and the next two for the professional certificate. but if you are more interested in being a critic about grammatical errors that were not intentional and obvious to see, do not take the course. I like the grammatical errors from time to time because to me, it means the people are actually humble and they are human.

My advice to TUMX Staff and Holly Ott don't change a thing about this professional certificate, you guys are doing a excellent job.

My Credentials: I have a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and I currently work as a Amazon Associate at MKE1

If my English structure is incorrect I apologize back in my high school days I was stuck with teachers for three years that spent 45 minutes a day talking about their marriage problems or money problems or just showing videos on subject instead of teaching it and that was in advanced English courses. Had the same problem with one college English course I took for a requirement, thank god for books. Got to love Self interest groups and Nepotism sometimes its not beneficial to students.

Well, I hope this helps.....

Sincerely Juan F.

Hello,
I am Nuruzzaman Faruqui from Dhaka, Banglades. I am an Electrical Engineer and working in a Mobile Telecom Company with the technical Project Team of my company. I have to work & perform with different project all over the year. For me this a is very good initiative to enrolled in this course. Course content is fantastic. I have just completed this course (Six Sigma: Define and Measure) . I found this course very helpful for who are working with project implementation. There is lots of tools & technique i learned. I learned lots of thing to maintain Quality. For maintaining quality this course is master of introduction. I learned how to define a problem and then how to measure and also how to define and measure all the problem in mathematically. My learning from this course :

1. To maintain Quality how to start with.
2. How to Define a problem
3. How to measure.
4. The implementation of Statistical Mathematics in real field.
5. How probability can be used as a countable way by using math.
6. The difference between Probability & Statistic.
7. The mathematics of Probability & Statistics.
8. About TUM School of Management.
9. Real life example how to apply DMAIC steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.
10. Vast using of Normal distribution and lots of implementation statistical & Probability mathematics and finally what is 6 Sigma program means and from where it is born ("It was introduced by American engineer Bill Smith while working at Motorola in 1986. Jack Welch made it central to his business strategy at General Electric in 1995. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of all opportunities to produce some feature of a part are statistically expected to be free of defects")
11. Defiantly learned about TUM and Beautiful presentation of all classes and flawless description of all topics from Professor Holly Ott, it is outstanding lecture of all.

This is a great course for the people who are working with projects. Thanks all the course coordinator and peers who helped me in different way and judge me by beautiful comments on my works. Thanks for fantastic presentation and choosing and explaining topics to be understand by the classical mathematics of statistics & probability. I really loved this course.

Thanks & best regards,

Md. Nuruzzaman Faruqui
Rollout Management Senior Manager
Network Service Management
Banglalink Digital Communications Ltd.
Tiger’s Den, House 4 (SWH), Bir Uttam Mir Shawkat Sharak
Gulshan 1, Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh

Hello, I am Prashant Bhavsar from India, working for an Automotive Industry in India.

Let me first thank Prof. Holly Ott for her incredible skill for making this course easier. Her presentation and delivery of the course was excellent and made it easy for someone like me who is out of college from last 20 years.

Here I want to add about the best things I liked about the course.
We have been going through equivalent courses but I never came so close to understanding the concept so well. Specifically about the course , the best thing was the idea of conceptualizing the content through self-doing. The exercises after each module were so excellent that you can learn every thing that has been taught during the module presentation.
Application of the training through exercises and the discussion forum was excellent.

The examples of the Case studies gave a good insight about the problem solving technique applying the Six-Sigma. I liked the explanation and application of DMAIC Process.
The mathematical part was always made enjoyable by Prof. Holy Ott. Thanks once again for your skills to make each and everything so simple. The statistics part was excellently understood.
One thing during the course that I enjoyed most was the probability distribution module and its example solves. Excellent material to learn and apply in actual work.

I liked Process-Mapping module as well. Being a part of an automotive industry and a test engineer for NVH(Noise, Vibration and Harshness) function, there are application of Process flow in my work application as well. I surely will apply the technique in my work.
The application of Six-Sigma process of Define and Measure for technical work will be applied for the Major problem solving in our function.

I would love to have the Print option of the test after solving all the questions in the module.
There is no easy way to take the module content in example solves. Example solves were great help to understand the content and will always need to be revised. So print-out of this content with the solution would always help.

I would like to share my experience, that although you might always revisit the module's video content for revising, but it would be always better to have small notes of important content while you will be studying the modules online.

I would like to thank the edx Support team and Prof. Holy ott for this wonderful online module.

Thanking you

Sincerely yours

PRASHANT BHAVSAR
INDIA

It was a great honour to provide a review related to the Six Sigma Online Course by the Technical University of Munich through EDx.
Browsing the internet, you’ll find that tons of institutions, organizations and various groups are offering similar Six-Sigma Training Course. They usually have a time frame of a straight 2 to 3 months (some on a daily or weekly basis), which will be challenging if you have a full-time job and a family that you take care of. The cost can also range from USD1,000 to USD6,000, forcing you to finish the course despite realizing its complexity or ending up partially refunding some of your money. To top all of this, you need to question the credibility of the institution providing it. Do they really have the right knowledge and experience related to Six-Sigma?
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is a well-know institution, and I immediately check the course the moment I found out they are offering the six-sigma course. My only worry is the price (quality comes with a cost) and the time it will require, plus the fact that I don’t speak German. Lo-and-behold! The entire course is for FREE! And for less than USD500, you can have a verified certificate. They also provide the course in English Language at your own phase even at 2 am you can take it anywhere. Defending on when you enroll, it allows you to finish it within a year.
Since Six Sigma encompasses a lot of tools, techniques and processes, it is very critical of how it will be presented to the audience by the presenter. WOW! Even the introduction itself make me feel very much welcome to MUNICH that I was hoping to come and visit the place and the professor one day! The course was also presented and categorized in a step-by-step process that acceptable to the wide range of diverse audiences. Prof. Holly Ott and Dr. Grunow NAILED IT! They’ve explained the topic very precisely and well, the majority of the audience can understand that.
From the Theory, Application and up to relative Examples, all the parts of the Six-Sigma course will help you fully understand and motivate you to implement it within your organization. I love the one-page Diagram they’ve shared to the students, plus the form to help and guide them towards achieving the Green belt. Amazing! The course is for free but the quality of the knowledge you’ll receive is priceless.
I WILL TOTALLY RECOMMEND THIS COURSE TO MY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES!!!

My name is Cole Shaigec and I am a management student at the London School of Economics. I highly commend Dr. Ott and her colleagues at TUM for their work in putting together this spectacular course.

Dr. Ott is an exceptionally skilled teacher. She conveyed the material in an engaging, clear, and concise manner that I was easily able to understand despite my complete lack of experience in the field. Her enthusiasm for the material is infectious and is evident throughout the course.

With respect to the course content, I greatly appreciated the inclusion of real-world examples to demonstrate how the Six Sigma methodology is applied in practice. I found this to be a very effective means of elucidating the subtle nuances of Six Sigma's basic theoretical underpinnings while also illustrating some of the common challenges encountered by Six Sigma practitioners.

The course taught me many key lessons that I hope to apply in an operations management internship next summer. It impressed upon me the importance of viewing business process optimization efforts as a means of improving customer experience rather than as ends in and of themselves. Additionally, it demonstrated the importance of cross-functional collaboration to ensure the success of process improvement projects. Most importantly, it introduced me to a new, data-driven way of thinking about business operations, which I believe will serve me very well in my future endeavours.

I strongly recommend this course to anyone who is interested in improving their understanding of business processes and I look forward to completing the next two courses in this series in order to obtain my Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification.

I am an MSc. student of Manufacturing Engineering and want to align my future career in production and quality department. Recently, I have taken an internship in production and quality department and worked on process capability based on measured data. Although I gained basic understanding of six sigma from my bachelor degree, this internship motivated me to gain in-depth knowledge of Six sigma. Then I have checked this TUM course in Edx and took it.

This courses is structured very well with appropriate examples, case studies and relevant mathematical problems of define and measure subtopics of DMAIC. The Prof. Holly Ott was nicely explaining every details of each and every topics with adequate examples so that one can easily understand. I am really overwhelmed with the design of course and nice presentation of prof.

In particular, I liked the two case studies the "Kopschitz candle" and "Hiking shoe" which enabled us to know how to handle the real life scenario of quality problems inside Industry. The theory that covered in define and measure are well implemented in these case studies. We have learned how to transform voice of customer to critical to quality characteristics and came to know about outline of measuring steps for these characteristics.

The binomial distribution is another aspect I really found helpful in this courses because it covers necessary mathematical problems to gain profound knowledge in this statistical process measuring. Now I have enough confidence that I can handle the real process very well by analyzing its data and whether the process falling under specification limits, identifying the defect rate of the process and process capability e.g Cp, Cpk and Cpm.

I also have got understanding of Process mapping, Tolerance design, FMEA etc. I will definitely finish other parts of this Yellow belt courses so that I can round up myself with the knowledge of all DMAIC phases. As I want to work on quality related responsibilities in manufacturing industries, I am confident that this Yellow belt courses will provide superb theoretical knowledge and practical industrial cases to implement this knowledge.

After taking this course I am very happy and looking forward to take other part of DMAIC. Thanks a lot to prof. and her team members who were involved in designing this course as well as to Edx authority since they offered this magnificent course.

Jafor Ahmad

M.Sc. in Manufacturing Technology

Technical University of Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

Former Executive, Production Planning dept., DBL-Group, Bangladesh

Former intern, Robert Bosch GmbH, Bamberg, Germany

Marvin Clarke. Alcoholic Beverage Industry

My name is Marvin Clarke. I have worked in Alcoholic Beverage Production for over 14 years.

I strongly recommend this course, Define & Measure, to every and anyone with a high level of commendation to the Technical University of Munich, for affording us the opportunity to understand these Six Sigma Tools and Concepts in how to convert a customers' want and need into an Actual Product or Service that may satisfy all of the expectations.

The Define and Measure aspect of Six Sigma will help you to understand the full features of a Customer Expectation and how they translates into the ideal product or service.

This course will help you to understand the Voice of the Customer (VOC), and how the Voice of the Customer becomes the Main Quality Characteristics of a product or service. The course provides you with an insight into the importance of the Measuring these key characteristics, and setting Parameters to ensure that the product or service can be produce to the 'standard expected by the customer'.

Most notable, this course will show you how to create the Process that will be responsible for converting the customers request into an actual product or service.

This will not only gives you an insight into a Product or Service Design, but will also provide you with an understanding of the Process Design, with an emphasis on the 'Voice of the Customer' as a central focus whilst the Conversion Process is carried out.

From there, you may be able to understand the factors that are 'Critical to Quality' and you will be able to understand how these factors and variations are controlled. The course will speak of Measurement Systems and the appropriate use of Measurement Systems in controlling a process.

Thus, you will learn how to assess your process and to know its level of Capability, whilst also identifying it's Tolerance levels.

In my experience, I work with an International Company who produces products for markets all over the world.

By doing this course, I have not only gained a much better understand of my job, but have gained a much better understanding of the Processes that makes such products.

I am now able to identify weaknesses in the Processes, and I believe I am able to recommend key process improvements whilst providing high quality; but at a much lower cost.

Once again, thank you to the Technical University of Munich.

To every and anyone, this is my heart felt recommendation.

Yours Sincerely,

Marvin Clarke

Ονομάζομαι Βαλσαμάκη Δάφνη, είμαι απο την Ελλάδα και διαμένω στην πόλη των Σερρών.
Η μέθοδος διδασκαλίας είναι εξαιρετική, με κατανοητά παραδείγματα και όχι πολύπλοκες αναφορές. Στα βίντεο περιγράφεται αναλυτικά ο κύκλος ποιότητας προϊόντος. Γίνονται αναφορές για τον τρόπο αναγνώρισης των ποιοτικών χαρακτηριστικών, της αναγνώρισης του τί θέλει ο πελάτης (voice of customer), του κρίσιμου σημείου για την ποιότητα (CTQ). Συνεχίσαμε με τον εντοπισμό των προβλημάτων και τις αιτίες αυτών, τη συλλογή δεδομένων και τις μετρήσεις απο δείγματα πληθυσμού. Ένα ακόμη σημαντικό κομμάτι ήταν η χρήση δεικτών(Cp. Cpk), για την μέτρηση των προδιαγραφών που πρέπει να έχουν τα προϊόντα.
Μάθαμε για την ανοχή η οποία εάν είναι αυστηρή, δηλαδή έχει χαμηλή μεταβλητότητα τότε έχουμε αυξημένο κόστος παραγωγής. Λίγο πρίν το τέλος της θεματικής ενότητας μάθαμε για τη λειτουργία αποτυχίας και την ανάλυση αποτελεσμάτων( FMEA) , καθώς και για τον αριθμό προτεραιότητας ρίσκου (RPN), τα οποία έχουν σημαντικό ρόλο στον εντοπισμό κααι την επίλυση προβλημάτων και τέλος κλείσαμε μαθαίνοντας τη χρησιμότητα άλλων δύο δεικτών (Pp,Ppk)που αφορούν μετρήσεις βραχυπρόθεσμων και μακροπρόθεσμων αποτυχιών. Οι γνώσεις που απέκτησα παρακολουθώντας το μάθημα αυτό είναι πολύτιμες και θα με βοηθήσουν στην επίτευξη των στόχων μου, οι οποίοι είναι αρχικά η Yellow belt κι έπειτα η Green belt. Σας ευχαριστώ.

This six sigma verified course has a lot of benefits and a great learning platform for not only me(sireesha) for everyone too who are browsing for this courses in websites. i had a wonderful experience with this course and i'm very thankful to prof.holly ott ,she explained each and every topic with ease.

The Session 1 by introducing Motorola’s Six Sigma methodology and the DMAIC process improvement cycle and then launched right in with yield calculations – helping us to understand exactly what 3.4 ppm means and introducing the concept of DPMO.

We moved into DEFINE in Session 2, discussing what quality means, and we have examples from a myriad of industries on our discussion board. We learned the Kano Model, applying this to an airline, and emphasized the importance of Problem Definition: don’t try to identify causes as problems!

In Sessions 3 and 4, we dove into MEASURE by reviewing the basics of Probability and Statistics, Descriptive vs Inferential Statistics, and introducing the Binomial, Poisson, and Normal distributions. We worked hard on the Normal distribution, and discussed sampling and the Central Limit Theorem – all important for Six Sigma analyses for MEASURE and later for ANALYZE, IMPROVE, and CONTROL. Several EXERCISES were available in this section to help you visualize the Normal distribution and to see the Central Limit Theorem in action.

SIPOC and Process Mapping gave us a break from the math in Week 5, and we talked again about Critical-to-Quality Characteristics. At this point, both PROJECTS were well underway!

Session 6 was a specialized session, going into details of Measurement System Analysis. This might be very unglamorous, but it is a critical part in a Six Sigma project. Here we welcomed the contribution from Zubair Anwar, ASQ Black Belt, who went through a Gage R&R study for us.

Process Capability and the concept of Six Sigma Capability brought us back in Session 7 to our statistics and to our yield measurements, here, showing us the well-known CP/CPK metrics for quantifying a Six Sigma process. This brought us to the important Six Sigma Capability levels which then allow a common discussion point for how a process is performing. Finally, Week 8 introduced additional topics in Six Sigma, including Tolerance Design, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, as well as some more details on Process Capability.

Kit Siang Tan, working in a power tool company as an R&D Engineer.
1. I learnt from this course a solid foundation on how to judge the quality of the processes involved in manufacturing parts I developed for my products. Given that certain dimensions defined are super critical to ensure functionality and performance, it is crucial to also know how to narrow down root causes, and plan for process improvements.
2. Quality assurance is as important to be tracked for long term as it is for short term. Usually in PDP, we ensure process capability until SOP. When everything is good, products are manufactured and launched to the customers. I understand that it is important to ensure quality even after a few years from SOP, and this course gave me some basic guideline on how to maintain a capable process to achieve quality parts.
3. This course somehow motivated me to truly listen to the voice of the customers. Design requirements are familiar to me, but through this course, I see the importance of defining proper and excellent critical-to-quality characteristics that are highly relevant to the VOC.

Hello! My name is Francisco Soria, I am from Argentina.

First of all, I want to say that I liked so much this course, the explanations of Professor Holly Ott were very clear with her examples and with her passion to teach. Thank you for that.

Really, I have taught a lot of things, I will write three of them in an overview in the first part of LSSYB course:

- Listen the voice of customer is one of the most important part. I did not know about de Kano model and Kano questionnaire. It is a very interesting tool to evaluate the situation, how or what is the impact of the product (or service) in the customer.

- This course has taught me a lot of concepts about statistics and probability. I have learning to analyze graphics and data from a process. I had knowledge about them from the university but really, I have not used it ever (I am electrical engineer). I have seen some about these topics in, for example, lightning discharges in the insulators but not related with process. I have discovered that I like these topics and they are fundamentals in the continuous improvement so, I have started to study more about them.

- I have taught that it doesn´t meter my specially or my knowledge, I have to study whatever the process, I have to understand it and for these I have to talk with the experts and with the workers. I should work with them and I have to involucrate them in the improvement of the process, this is fundamental.

In my city there are very industries where I could apply these knowledges, transformation of sugar cane into sugar, collection of lemons and transformation into different products (oils, essences, etc.), these are the main industries in my province.

I have had a little experience with Lean Six Sigma, I have worked for General Electric and with a team, we should carry out a project to improve the data management processes in the quality area. This project was presented to evaluators and chosen winner of the Summer Experience Lean Challenge program. Although that we have applied only the concepts (there were not statistics or probability) this experience inspired me to learn more about LSS.

I have completed the first part of the course. Now, I going to complete the other 2/3 parts, and continuous learning.

This course teaches you the foundation knowledge required to master Lean manufacturing. Passing the 3 courses of Edx with Tum university you can achieve a yellow belt certificate in lean manufacturing that is a great acknowledgement and starting point to develop a career in any manufacturing company. Green belt certificate can also be achieved through this university based in Munich.

The classes are given using recorded videos in English. Subtitles and power point presentations to improve e following of the classes are also made available. Every chapter is wrapped up with a quiz.

If you have studied statistical mathematics at bachelor level, you might find this course basic but the way it all links up with the quality and engineering perspective will teach you useful tools that are applied in many engineering companies.

I recommend the course to any engineering professional, project manager or student looking out to round off their experience. This course helped me stand out of the crowd and give a turn to my career.

I finished the course studying 4 hours a week.
I have study business administration 25 years ago, So I remembered material I learned years ago, viewed from a modern view. The material is very well structure and the presentation from Professors Holly Ott, Martin Grunow and the team is excellent.
The course is one of the three courses for the Professional Certificate in “Six Sigma and Lean:
Quantitative Tools for Quality and Productivity”
During the three courses I learn how to translate customer demand/specifications into measurable characteristics and measure the baseline performance I can analyze the data statistically and design experiments for improvement and set in place controls.
The last course “Lean production” helps me how to identify wastes and value flows, understand variability, relate customer demand to the production planning for developing pull-systems. It is important that the material I learned can be applied in many different industries.

Respected Proff. Ott,

Thank you for designing an amazing course which keeps an insight into the world of Six Sigma. There are a lot of things I have learned from this course. But to be specific, I would like to talk 3 of them.

1. KANO Model: I will definitely be talking about this model with my Sales Team. Our customers always complain regarding the late delivery of our products. I believe that this model can greatly help us to serve our customers in a better way.

2. Process Mapping: I have already worked with a topic called "Value Stream Mapping". The process mapping can help my company in finding out the flaws in our manufacturing process and hence improve the process and also reduce the cost at same time.

3. CTQ's: I would use this approach and talk about it with the shop flow managers and workers. Since, they are the real persons who produce our sensors day in and day out; they surely know the things that can help us make the production process smoother and efficient.

My name is Norvin from Bellevue, WA-USA with a background in Mechanical Engineering. As I write this I am in between roles as well as a Co-Founder of an early stage startup called Vivify Trucks. The 3 specific things that I learned in this course that should be helpful in the future is Tolerance Design, FMEA, and Central Limit Theorem. I found that being able to replay, rewind, and slow down the lectures made it easier to grasp with a level of certainty the fundamental topics covered in this course. Having completed this course and the other 2 courses within the professional certificate program, I feel relieved to have obtained LSSYB after touching upon bits and pieces of Six Sigma concepts throughout my professional career but not necessarily the whole picture which I feel the Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt professional certificate program provides. Anyhow, I welcome and look forward to the opportunity to gaining a Green Belt certification in the near future.