Green Belts, Black Belts and Master Black Belts

Green Belts run bigger projects, using bigger teams and spanning larger portion of the organization.

So you need less Green Belts than Yellow Belts.

Another consideration is the amount of projects your organization can handle.

A Green Belt should run 4-5 project annually. If you have 20 Green Belts, that means you have 80-100 project per year, can the organization handle this, who will support these projects?

A Black Belt can run 2-3 projects per year, larger project, more difficult and spanning the entire organization. In the project you can find 3-5 Green Belts, managing parts of the project.

Again: how many projects can the organization manage.

The Belt pyramid

Yellow Belts.

Yellow Belts help your organization in three ways.

First of all they solve problems on their own shop floor, making their place a better place to work and prohibiting small problems to become big problem.
Secondly, they are trained team members for any Green or Black Belt project. No need to explain the tools anymore, no need to stress the importance or to explain Continuous Improvement. And finally, as large numbers of employees go through Yellow Belt training, they change the culture.

Continuous Improvement becomes the norm, looking for waste and fixing problems once and for all is the way we work.

Ultimately you want everyone to be trained as a Yellow Belt.

Still it’s wise to consider the speed in which you train the entire population. It’s contraproductive to train people if they cant apply the new skills. It will frustrate the candidates and will not help the organization, as they will have forgotten most by the time they are able to apply the skills. Proper training timing is crucial.