Six Sigma Certification

The ASQ Body of Knowledge and Its Creation

The American Society for Quality or the ASQ is one of the most trusted professional certification communities in the United States and worldwide. This group of quality control experts is responsible for offering different professional certifications for every industry in the United States. ASQ has created many of them, including that of the Six Sigma program.

A Six Sigma certification is offered by the ASQ in three various levels. One is the Six Sigma Black Belt, which was established in 2001; Six Sigma Green Belt, which was created five years after (2006),; and the Master Black Belt, which was established after another five years (2010).

For every certification, there is a Body of Knowledge that every people under a certain Six Sigma specification must learn. All the philosophies, principles, concepts, and tools must be learned along with the specific number of years he has put in practicing these, in order to answer the certification exam.

But how is a Body of Knowledge formed? For ASQ, it is two-fold: through job analysis survey and member input. The process of developing a specific examination for a Six Sigma certification starts with a survey of the job analysis conducted every five years. The survey is created by the advisory board assigned by an ASQ division.

This advisory board is comprised of ASQ members that have been certified with their Six Sigma certification. Their work will subsequently result into a survey questionnaire that should be rated by respondents per item for being critical and being frequent. Then, the member input comes in.

Once the survey questionnaire is approved, it is sent to a small group of ASQ members who are either working on the specific certification or overseeing employees performing the tasks according to the survey. A Body of Knowledge committee is formed after careful analysis of the survey data, and would therefore turn these results into categories and subtopics that are to be used for creating a comprehensive test.