Rice Business Green Belt
The Pathway to Becoming an Operations Improvement Professional
The Rice Business Green Belt is specifically designed to ensure that students are both trained in the required Lean Sigma methodologies; and are prepared to lead strategic, impactful process improvement projects. Students will understand the use of basic statistics, flow and waste-based lean and quality tools, along with the DMAIC roadmap and tools necessary to significantly improve processes.
The goal is to finalize the development of the individual to ensure that the candidate is capable of successfully performing at the Green Belt level. It’s not just about being able to regurgitate a body of knowledge, but rather the successful participant can actually perform the work using the improvement skill sets and achieve the required result.
Training Requirements
Training to meet requirements is achieved through a defined set of Rice’s Operations Management classes and project labs (see below). To qualify, students must have completed the following classes:
- MGMT748: Operations Improvement I - Toolkit
- MGMT749: Operations Improvement II - Methodology
Through these classes, students will cover the following key topics:
- Commencing a Project including: Identifying Needs, Project Chartering, Team Formation, Leading a Project
- Understanding the Process including: Mapping Tools, Understanding Current State, Metrics and Measures, Basic Statistics, Minitab and Data, Data Study Preparation
- Identifying Root Causes including: Statistical Hypotheses (Making Comparisons and Testing Relationships), Understanding Demand, Flow, Capacity and Value
- Implementing and Sustaining Improvements including: 5s, Setup Reduction, Control Methods, SPC, and Validating Results
Project Requirements
Students must also have completed a process improvement project utilizing the tools and roadmaps taught in the training classes above. This can be through a Rice Business process improvement lab:
- MGMT753: Healthcare Ops Lab (or an equivalent project experience if agreed by Rice Operations Improvement faculty)
Attaining the Rice Business Green Belt
Once the student has completed the courses and a suitable project, they qualify to submit their work for the Green Belt. To be awarded the Rice Business Green Belt, candidates must:
- Complete all training
- Complete a suitable project
- Through a short Body of Knowledge test, demonstrate technical competency on key tools at a practitioner’s level
- Through one-on-one interview with Rice Operations Improvement faculty walk through the critical thinking in the project and the roadmap in a project presentation. Explain the choice of tools, their application, results and implications
- Create and deliver a 20-minute project presentation to the Rice Business Operations Improvement Board
On completing and passing the requirements, candidates will be awarded the Rice Business Green Belt.
Frequently Asked Questions
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The Operations Club Green Belt will certainly help give the student the basic understanding of the methods. The Rice Business Green Belt further the prepares the student with a much greater breadth and depth of tools, along with the needed systematic roadmaps to perform process improvement in a professional capacity.
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Unfortunately, the Entrepreneurship Lab doesn’t have the process performance improvement focus needed to meet the Rice Business Green Belt requirements.
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The Operations Improvement Toolkit and Methodology classes are freely open to all students seeking to improve their knowledge of performance improvement and gain the associated course credit. Without the project however, the student does not meet the requirements of the Rice Business Green Belt.
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Lecturer in Operations Management