Lean and Six Sigma Training
For more than a decade, our Lean Sigma team has helped health care professionals to create data-driven solutions for waste and defects in care delivery. We were among the first organizations to adapt Lean and Six Sigma methods from manufacturing into a curriculum tailored for the health care world. Since then, we have trained hundreds of Green Belts at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere, and we have coached many others in straightforward Lean methods to eliminate waste in their workplaces.
Introduction to Lean Sigma
Learn how Lean Sigma can be used to make health care delivery more efficient while improving quality of care and patient safety.
Training Programs
We regularly offer two courses in Baltimore.
- Lean Sigma Green Belt Certificate Course - Combines Lean methods for optimizing flow, increasing speed and reducing waste, with Six Sigma statistical tools to identify root causes and reduce defects.
- Lean Practitioner for Healthcare Certificate Course - Provides tools and techniques that a wide range of frontline staff can use to identify waste in health care delivery processes, and then reduce or eliminate that waste.
In addition to holding scheduled courses in Baltimore, we can bring training to your facility. Other services include consulting, remote coaching and Lean Kaizen rapid- cycle improvement projects. Email [email protected].
Our Instructors
We are Lean Sigma Black Belts and Master Black Belts who have previous experience as health care providers or in industry. In addition to leading courses, our instructors regularly facilitate projects that improve quality, safety and efficiency within Johns Hopkins Medicine and other organizations. The guidance that they provide in the classroom is grounded in their real-world experiences of helping health care teams to overcome obstacles and make lasting, measurable changes.
Lean Practitioner & Lean Sigma Green Belt Course FAQs
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It is our goal to ensure that everyone certified through our program has demonstrated an ability to apply the concepts and tools taught in our courses. As a result, for the Lean Practitioner and Lean Sigma Green Belt projects, we expect that a single candidate leads the entirety of the work. We will occasionally make exceptions and allow two candidates to work together on a Lean Sigma Green Belt project, however these requests are approved on a case-by-case basis only. When two candidates do lead a Lean Sigma Green Belt project together, it is still expected that each candidate understands and can speak to the entirety of the work.
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While we don’t have a list of projects for certification candidates to lead, it is likely that there is a potential project within your work that would meet the requirements for Certification. While these courses focus on the application of Lean and Six Sigma in healthcare, it is acceptable to complete a project anywhere processes exist.
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For the Lean Practitioner Certification, projects usually take a few months. The Lean Sigma Green Belt Certification projects often take 6-12 months.
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If you earned a Lean Practitioner or Lean Sigma Green Belt Certificate of Training, we suggest highlighting this along with other education certificates. If you complete the project requirement and earn Lean Practitioner or Lean Sigma Green Belt Certification, then you could note that you are a Certified Lean Practitioner or Certified Lean Sigma Green Belt.
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To help maintain the integrity of our program, participants must complete all course assignments (receiving full credit on each) and pass the exam to earn a Certificate of Training. Attendees who do not complete these requirements by the close of the course will not earn a Certificate or Training and are not eligible to earn Certification.
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While there is not a hard and fast deadline, we suggest that you complete your project within a year after the completion of the course.
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To reduce the likelihood that your project focus will become deprioritized, it is important to ensure that your project has champion support and aligns to strategic objectives. Even when this is done, priorities sometimes change, and we are required to refocus our efforts. Our recommendation is to continue to select strategic projects and ensure strong buy-in. It may also help to scope the project a bit tighter to shorten the project timeline.
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While the Lean Practitioner Certificate of Training is a prerequisite to take the Lean Sigma Green Belt course, it is not required that you earn Lean Practitioner Certification prior to initiating the Lean Sigma Green Belt course. However, the Lean Practitioner Certification will allow you to apply lean concepts and tools, preparing you well as you enter the Lean Sigma Green Belt course, and we recommend this as a best practice.
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Projects are a required part of Certification because we believe the best learning is by doing. Therefore, we want to ensure that candidates have an opportunity to apply the course learnings in a project. This can only be done when candidates complete their certification project after the training. Projects completed prior to the training course will not be accepted for Certification.
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Each of the exams is online and is open book/open note, although we expect each student to take the test separately. The test must be completed in one sitting, and a score of 80% or greater is required to pass. All questions included in the exams are covered in our courses, so students who follow along with the course material, complete the assignments, and use our course material as a reference often pass the exam on the first attempt. Note that since the Lean Practitioner Course is a prerequisite to the Lean Sigma Green Belt Course, there may be Lean Practitioner questions included on the Lean Sigma Green Belt exam.
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Successful completion requires each student seeking certification to demonstrate and document the following:
- Significant individual leadership and participation of the team
- Appropriate use of the Lean tools and A3 problem solving methodology
- Measurable results (e.g. operational improvements or benefits) demonstrated to be “sustainable”.
The Lean Practitioner project must include the following:
- A final A3 that summarizes the entire completed project that follows either the DMAIC or the "Gap/Why/Try/Reflect" methodology. Particularly, the "Define/Gap" area must include:
- Problem Statement
- Process Metric
- Project Goal
- All supporting documentation detailing the use of Lean tools used during the project.
- Specific required sections:
- Process (VSM (Value Stream Mapping), Process Map, or Swim Lane Map)
- VOC
- SIPOC
- DOMOWIT Analysis
- Root Cause Analysis (FTA, FMEA, Fishbone, Spaghetti Diagram, Affinity Diagram, Pareto Chart, 5-Whys, etc)
- Interventions (prioritized with Benefit-Effort analysis)
- Pre-Post Analysis for validation of results
- Sustainability (Standard Work and Control Plan)
- Optional tools:
- 5S
- Kanban
- Kaizen Event
- Takt Time, Cycle Time, Dynamic Lean Time, VA, NVA, NNVA, etc.
- Specific required sections:
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Certification requires each candidate seeking certification to demonstrate and document the following:
- Significant individual leadership of the team
- Full execution of all DMAIC phases
- Appropriate use of the Lean Sigma tools and DMAIC methodology
- Measurable results (e.g. operational improvements or benefits) demonstrated to be “in control”
A list of required tools and concepts the candidate is expected to apply will be communicated to candidates once the Certificate of Training is earned.
Success Stories
Lean Sigma can be used to target waste and defects in any component of health care delivery. Among the improvements that we have helped teams to achieve:
- Reducing readmissions. Helped 30-day readmission rates for heart failure patients to reach an all-time low, down to 17.5 percent from a baseline of 24 percent
- Saving blood products. Reduced by more than 50 percent the rate at which units of packed red blood cells had to be discarded, saving $800,000 in the first four years
- Ensuring MRI safety. Conducted a proactive risk assessment to identify possible failures associated with a new intraoperative MRI suite, and then implemented several preventive measures
- Streamlining medication administration. Reduced total time for Botox administration process from 42 minutes to 24 minutes in an outpatient neurology clinic
- Capturing revenue. Realized an additional $50,000 a month for charges related to supplies in procedures in an interventional radiology service
Turning Health Care Improvement Training into Results
Laura Winner, Senior Director of Operational Excellence, Lean Sigma Deployment, recommends simple strategies to ensure that new skills are put to use.
