Which are the Top Operational Excellence Training Providers?

Why Your Choice Matters... A Lot

Choosing the right Operational Excellence training program is crucial for anyone looking to improve their skills and knowledge in this field.   With so many contradicting options available in the market, it can be challenging to know which program and provider is the best option.

Choosing the wrong program or provider can be a waste of time and money, and can even lead to negative impacts on your organization.  This is particularly important if you are new to OpEx and need a program that will provide a strong foundation in the principles and techniques of continuous improvement.

Therefore, it's essential to consider several factors when choosing an OpEx training program, such as the program's curriculum, trainers’ experience and expertise, and mode of training.

By making the right choice, you can equip yourself with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in your organization.  In this article, we’ll go over some of the top training providers and what they offer.

Why should you listen to us?

We’ve been doing OpEx for 20 years, and have seen the failures caused by not having the right type of OpEx training.  We’ve seen the results of many of these providers where it matters, in the field, and not in a resume or a nice certification.   And we've seen successful organizations adapt and evolve their skills from Six Sigma, incorporating Lean and Kaizen, transforming with a TPM approach, and most importantly, being able to embed OpEx into the Leadership and Management Systems.

So, let's first cover the critical factors and considerations that should be taken into account when evaluating training providers, to choose the best option.

Factors to Consider

At the end of the day, you're looking for two overarching, complemented, and balanced characteristics:

• Effective and Affordable Capability Building, and
• Structured for successful execution.

Capability Building:

Capability Building means that you're actually transferring the most important knowledge and skills.  You want this to be effective, meaning in the least amount of time.   And you want this to be affordable, meaning that you can not only train a few people in your organization but that you can train a large number of people at a low cost.

Structured for Success:

By "Structured for success", we mean that the people who take the training are going to be able to go and make real world changes in their company.   This means that you will actually be able to drive a business transformation in a sustainable manner, as opposed to just being able to complete a project or just get a certification.

So with this in mind we're looking for four complementing characteristics.

1.  Curriculum:

First, it's the actual curriculum.  Make sure that the training provider's curriculum covers the relevant topics and tools that will help you in your job and career, particularly this year.  Also, check whether the provider has adapted to the latest developments, trends, and best practices in the field.

2.  Trainers:

Second, it's the actual trainers. Do they have the right experience and expertise? Or did they just learn what they teach from literature or from the same organization? The trainers need to have trainers that have hands-on experience in the field. You want them to be experts.

3.  Options:

Third, it's what kind of options do they offer?  It's one thing if you're just one person looking to understand what OpEx is all about, it's a whole different story if you're looking for a provider that could give you training for multiple different audiences in your organization.  The providers that can give you more curriculum options are better, because you can train operators, team leaders, managers, engineers, directors, VP's, even the CEO, and train them exactly on what they need when they need it.

The other thing to consider is different languages. We live in a global economy. If the provider can give you multiple languages, that is huge so that your entire organization has access to the same level of knowledge. You also want to look for a provider that offers self-paced online or virtual facilitated, so that travel and timing never becomes an obstacle.

Before we dig into the fourth factor, I want to remind everyone that we all have different learning styles. Some people are more visual, others can absorb well by reading, for others the best way is to actually practice and take actions to apply. For adults, in particular, the retention rates of these different ways to deliver the training increase dramatically the more discussions, practice, feedback, application you give the students during class and with project work and immediate actions in their own job.  And if during the class if they get to coach or teach others, even more.  So, that's big to understand.

4.  Support:

So the fourth factor is, Support.  As a student, you want to able to ask questions, get coached, get feedback, and all those things we just discussed. So you want your provider to be able to give you that, either during the course or better yet, after you've already gone and applied it in the field.  So if your trainer is also a coach, that's even better!

Those are the key things to consider.

But what about certifications?

Here's the truth about certifications. They don’t matter!  When you want to excel at your job and grow in your career, you need skills and results, not a certification. When an employer is looking at your resume, they're not looking for a certification, they're looking for evidence that you can actually get results and that have demonstrated those skills.

Back in the day, yes, maybe Green Belt or Black Belt certification meant something, but today, with the evolution of Operational Excellence going away from pure Six Sigma, with all the number of unknown certification providers out there, employers don't even care.  And if they hired you and you didn't have the skills you claimed from your certification, what are you gonna do then? Ask for training?  Probably not!

Top Operational Excellence Training Providers

By considering these factors, you can ensure that you find a training provider that is well-suited to your needs and can provide you with the knowledge and skills you need to succeed in your career.  So let's now start with a review of each top provider.

A.  Villanova University:

Villanova University has a good reputation since the early 2000's.  They offer online and on-campus Yellow Belt, Green Belt, and Black Belt training. For example, a Green Belt course costs over $2000.  It is quite pricy, but that's not the issue.

The issue is, if you look at the curriculum, it's very heavy on the six sigma side and statistical tools, more applicable to quality.   There is nothing on lean tools, practical problem-solving or soft skills.  So, it might look good in theory, but it's structured for failure, unless you're an experienced Quality Engineer with complex quantitative problems to solve using these tools.

Example of Villanova's Green Belt curriculum:

B.  American Society for Quality (ASQ):

ASQ is well renown.  It's a professional society dedicated to quality improvement. Their programs are similar to Villanova's Yellow, Green, and Black Belts in terms of price and structure.  In terms of content and teachers, it looks much better than Villanova's.  They have more industry experience.

However, they suffer the same gap. They're focused on quality, and just like other combined Lean Six Sigma programs, they added some Lean tools mostly into the improve phase of the DMAIC process. But that's the problem with these programs, they're very light on the Lean approach, the culture, the leadership, the management system part of it.  Again, for a Quality Engineer it could be great, and it's popular for certification preparation, but for an OpEx program, you're structuring it to fail.

Example of ASQ's Green Belt Curriculum:

C.  Lean Six Sigma Institute:

This one starting to look a little better. They added more lean materials, a curriculum on Lean Management (mostly Strategic Planning). Good quality of materials and videos. They also started translating some curriculums into Spanish and they started a network in Latin America.

The problem is that Lean is still a little too light, they teach Lean as part of Yellow Belt, and it's too basic.  You can tell this by the short length of the more advanced Lean lessons.  Their Green Belt course is like all Six Sigma. Their MBB curriculum is terrible. So here it's noteworthy that LSSI also works like a consulting company, so they may compliment their training gaps with their (expensive) consulting practice. So if we look at just the Training portion of it, it's still structured for failure.

Example of Lean Six Sigma Institute's Yellow Belt Curriculum:

Example of Lean Six Sigma Institute's Green Belt Curriculum:

D.  Lean Methods Group:

This used to be BMGI, good reputation for online training. Similar characteristics and gaps, similar history. Grew from Six Sigma to incorporate Lean into it. They do offer some basic Lean and more advanced Lean Practitioner route.  Their prices are also way more expensive ($3500 for an online Green Belt course!).

This company also decided to focus more on the consulting side of things. So without the Consulting, it's probably a chance to fail if you use it as your OpEx provider, because Lean and Six Sigma aren't completely integrated. Also the quality of their materials might become outdated as they spent a lot of effort making it interactive (using the typical Storyline software you'll see in corporate "Compliance Training" you have to take once a year) to make up for other ways of making it engaging and gamifying it.

Example of Lean Methods Group's Green Belt Curriculum:

Example of Lean Methods Group's Lean Practitioner Curriculum:

E.  Lean Enterprise Institute:

The Lean Enterprise Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing Lean thinking and practice. They offer a wide range of training programs, including Lean Certification, Kaizen Workshops, and Lean Fundamentals.  Their training is designed to be interactive and engaging, with a focus on continuous improvement and waste reduction.  The criticism for LEI is it's obsessive glorification of Toyota, and their effort to keep Lean applicable to any industry keeps teaching Lean as a philosophical level, instead at a practical level and specific to industry sectors.

Example of Lean Enterprise's various courses:

F.  Gemba Academy:

Gemba Academy is a leading provider of Lean and Kaizen training, offering courses for both beginners and advanced learners.  They provide video-based training that covers the full range of Lean and Kaizen tools and techniques, including Value Stream Mapping, 5S, and Continuous Improvement.
The quality of videos is good and offers real world examples.  The criticisms for this provider is the sole focus on videos, and so many videos to choose from.  This creates a gap in the practical application and undefined learning paths.  It also suffers from a similar criticism as LEI, keeping their videos industry neutral in an effort to capture more clients, watering down some concepts to keep relevant to service environments. 

Example of Gemba Academy's Green Belt curriculum:

G.  Kaizen Institute:

The Kaizen Institute is a global consulting firm that specializes in Lean and Kaizen training and implementation.  They offer a variety of training programs, including Kaizen Facilitator Training and Lean Leadership Development.  Their training is designed to be practical and focused on improving processes and systems.  The Kaizen Institute also offers a Consulting practice, so this could help complement the knowledge with on-the-field support.  However, clients risk that their interest lies in Consulting as it is more profitable for them and by default your internal resources won't receive the sustainable capability building.  

Example of Kaizen Institute's Green Belt curriculum:

Course Forward:

Ultimately, the best training provider for you will depend on your individual goals and the specific needs of your organization.  Each of these providers offers a unique approach to Lean Six Sigma training and certification and have different features in their program. 

It's important to research and compare the different options to find the one that best fits your needs.  It's important to note that the training providers I mentioned in my previous answers are well-known and recognized in their field.  However, it's always recommended to conduct a thorough research and evaluate all options before making a decision.