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and leadership ability, a Black Belt is an individual who solves difficult business
issues for the last time. Typically, the Black Belts have a couple of years on software
life during the Deployment phase. Nevertheless, their effect as a disciple of software
DFSS when they finish their software life (postdeployment for them) and move on
as the next-generation leaders cannot be trivialized. It is recommended that a fixed
population of Black Belts (usually computed as a percentage of affected functions
masses where software DFSS is deployed) be kept in the pool during the designated
deployment plan. This population is not static; however, it is kept replenished every
year by new blood. Repatriated Black Belts, in turn, replenish the disciple population
and the cycle continues until sustainment is achieved. Software DFSS becomes the
way of doing design business.
Black Belts will learn and understand software DFSS methodologies and principles
and find application opportunities within the project, cultivate a network of experts,
train and assist others (e.g., Green Belts) in new strategies and tools, leverage surface
business opportunities through partnerships, and drive concepts and methodology
into the way of doing work.
The deployment of Black Belts is a subprocess with the deployment process itself
with the following steps: 1) Black Belt identification, 2) Black Belt project scoping,
3) Black Belt training, 4) Black Belt deployment during the software life, and 5)
Black Belt repatriation into the mainstream.
The deployment team prepares designated training waves or classes of software
Black Belts to apply DFSS and associated technologies, methods, and tools on scoped
projects. Black Belts are developed by project execution, training in statistics and
design principles with on-the-project application, and mentored reviews. Typically,
with a targeted quick cycle time, a Black Belt should be able to close a set number of
projects a year. Our observations indicate that Black Belt productivity, on the average,
increases after his/her training projects. After their training focused descoped project,
the Black Belt projects can get more complex and evolve into cross-function, supply-
chain, and customer projects.
The Black Belts are the leaders of the future. Their visibility should be apparent
to the rest of the organization, and they should be cherry-picked to join the software
DFSS program with the “leader of the future” stature. Armed with the right tools,
processes, and DFSS principles, Black Belts are the change agent network the de-
ploying company should use to achieve its vision and mission statements. They need
to be motivated and recognized for their good effort while mentored at both the tech-
nical and leadership fronts by the Master Black Belt and the project champions. Oral
and written presentation skills are crucial for their success. To increase the effective-
ness of the Black Belts, we suggest building a Black Belt collaboration mechanism
for the purpose of maintaining structures and environments to foster individual and
collective learning of initiative and DFSS knowledge, including initiative direction,
vision, and prior history. In addition, the collaboration mechanism, whether virtual
or physical, could serve as a focus for Black Belt activities to foster team building,
growth, and inter- and intra-function communication and collaboration. Another im-
portant reason for establishing such a mechanism is to ensure that the deployment
team gets its information accurate and timely to prevent and mitigate failure modes
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