Real Reference Material vs Back Breaking Binders of Slideuments

In most six sigma training the students get several big thick binders filled with the PowerPoint slides used in class. This is a huge waste: a waste of trees, a waste energy carrying the things back to the office, and a waste of shelf space. The problem is that good presentation materials make horrible documents and good documents make horrible slides. When you try to do both you get slideuments, and slideuments stink.

So when I had the opportunity to develop Green Belt training from scratch I committed to making the PowerPoint slides support my message without being the message, and to giving my students decent reference material instead of useless slideuments. Since the organization is saving perhaps a quarter million a year by doing the training in house instead of hiring one of the big consultant firms, we can spend a few bucks on books.

Here is a list of the books I use in my Six Sigma Green Belt training.

Getting Things Done by David Allen

A very good book on personal productivity, it also has a chapter on project planning that I used as a basis for project management training material. I think Everyone should read this book.

The Six Sigma Handbook by Thomas Pyzdek

A big fat reference book. I don't think I like this any more than Implementing Six Sigma by Forrest Breyfogle (another big fat reference book I've used for many years). But it is cheaper.

Improving Healthcare Quality and Cost with Six Sigma

A nice application of the tools to healthcare. I've gotten good feedback on the book from the Green Belt candidates.

Measuring Quality Improvement in Healthcare: A guide to statistical process control applications

An excellent book on using SPC in healthcare. It has a lot of examples, many of which were directly applicable to processes the students work with every day. Chapter 5 has almost everything a Green Belt needs to know about SPC. In fact, this is probably the best book on SPC for non-statisticians that I've seen.

The Lean Healthcare Pocket Guide XL - Tools for the Elimination of Waste in Hospitals, Clinics and Other Healthcare Facilities
This has nice, concise description of most Lean tools. The XL version is much easier to read than the pocket size version.

Rath & Strong's Guide to Minitab: Release 15

I gave the students this guide as an alternative to writing my own guide to Minitab. I may have to write one myself anyway.