{"id":7840,"date":"2026-04-21T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/?p=7840"},"modified":"2026-02-18T15:56:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T22:56:18","slug":"yellow-belts-or-green-and-black-belts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/yellow-belts-or-green-and-black-belts\/","title":{"rendered":"Yellow Belts or Green and Black Belts"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Six Sigma dogma says you need Green and Black Belts, but you might be a lot better off with Yellow Belts. Here&#8217;s why:<\/p>\r\n<p><em>Download my free ebook, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/pdf\/Agile-Process-Innovation.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1101901937?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>&#8220;Hi, I&#8217;m Jay Arthur, author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lean-Six-Sigma-Demystified-Second\/dp\/0071749098\/\">Lean Six Sigma Demystified<\/a>\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/demo\/\">QI Macros [software]<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;You know, there seems to be a lot of discussion in Six Sigma about whether you need Green Belts or Black Belts or Yellow Belts. I believe the correct answer is Yellow Belts.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;I just spoke with a company, a worldwide manufacturing company, and they train people. They train Yellow Belts, and they expect each Yellow Belt to create a $10,000 improvement. Then from that, they can figure out who should go on to Green Belt and Black Belt training, because you have no idea when you start. It&#8217;s not that you don&#8217;t want Green Belts and Black Belts; you can&#8217;t start there because you don&#8217;t know who has the tools to do the job.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;What we want to do is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/minimum-viable-training-mvt\/\">Minimum Viable Training: MVT<\/a>. Minimum Viable Training, right? A handful of tools will solve most problems. You know, most Six Sigma courses teach you all the tools you will never need\u2026 things that you will never use, right? I was mainly in services, so I&#8217;ve yet to use <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/design-of-experiments\/how-to-perform-a-design-of-experiments\/\">DOE<\/a> for anything. Now, if you&#8217;re in manufacturing, sure\u2026 but I don&#8217;t need all those things. Most of the world works in service industries now, not manufacturing. All right? Manufacturing is a two-trillion-dollar business, and healthcare is somewhere between three and four and a half trillion. Where would I like to spend my money? Because that&#8217;s where I can save the most money.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Anyway, that&#8217;s my Improvement Insight for this week. Let&#8217;s train more Yellow Belts. And I have a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/Moneybelt\/\">free Yellow Belt training<\/a> online that anybody can take anywhere, anytime, and US military can take the certification for free.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s go out and improve something this week, like how we train people to improve every single day.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Six Sigma dogma says you need Green and Black Belts, but you might be a lot better off with Yellow Belts. Here&rsquo;s why: Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results. &#65279; &ldquo;Hi, I&rsquo;m Jay Arthur, author of &ldquo;Lean Six Sigma Demystified&rdquo; and QI Macros [software]. &ldquo;You know, there seems to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[637,636,118,168,635],"class_list":["post-7840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-black-belts","tag-green-belts","tag-lean-six-sigma","tag-qi-macros","tag-yellow-belts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7840"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8292,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7840\/revisions\/8292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}