The Six Sigma Handbook, Revised and Expanded, 2nd Edition

1.3. BLACK BELTS

There are usually many more Black Belt candidates than there are positions. Thus, although there are minimum requirements, those selected generally exceed the minimums by a considerable degree. The process for selecting Black Belts should be clearly defined. This assures consistency and minimizes the possibility of bias and favoritism.

The next question is, what's important to the success of a Black Belt? I worked with a group of consultants and Master Black Belts to answer this question. We came up with a list of seven success factors, then used Expert Choice 2000 software^[] to calculate relative importance weights for each category. The results are shown in Figure 1.10.

^[] Expert Choice 2000 is a software package that converts ...