(Accelper Consulting: Schaumburg, IL) -- Accelper Consulting presented one of the world’s largest Six Sigma Green Belt (SSGB) certification and training events at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) School of Applied Technology in Wheaton, Illinois, during March 26–27.

What began with an idea of offering a complimentary Six Sigma Green Belt training at churches, temples, and libraries turned into the largest ever certification and training event for Six Sigma Green Belts.

Accelper Consulting organized two full days of live training for displaced as well as employed workers from all over the world. Professionals from Dubai, Romania, France, Mexico, Canada,
and many U.S. states signed up for the class. A total of 195 people registered for the session, 141 showed up, and 127 achieved Six Sigma Green Belt certification.

i-Nexus, ASQ Chicago Section, IIT School of Applied Technology, Gantec Corp., Chicago Manufacturing Center, and Accelper Consulting along with many volunteers lent their support to this community service event.

This is an innovation in corporate training, combining social media tools with classroom instruction. A LinkedIn network was created prior to the training to understand attendees’ learning needs. The training was mixed with audio and video presentations of concepts as well as music for changing the pace. The LinkedIn network is being used to follow up and support the newly trained and certified Six Sigma Green Belts.

Since the training, participants’ feedback has been pouring in. Participants are using words such as amazing, wonderful, most inspiring, intense, exciting, fantastic, a blast, impressive, and dynamic to describe the training. Participants loved the simplification of Six Sigma for practical application and quickly achieving dramatic improvement.

“Thank you for sharing your contagious enthusiasm and Six Sigma knowledge base with us. You added just the right blend of humor and variety (e.g., music) to make it an enjoyable (but intense) learning experience,” commented one participant.

The Six Sigma Green Belt class was taught by Praveen Gupta, an internationally recognized expert in Six Sigma, who led the initial deployment of Six Sigma at Motorola in 1986. He has authored numerous books on this subject including Six Sigma Business Scorecard (McGraw-Hill, 2006), Six Sigma Performance Handbook (McGraw-Hill 2004), Business Innovation in the 21st Century (Accelper Consulting, 2007), and Stat Free Six Sigma (Accelper Consulting, 2007).

The highlight of the event was the presence of Betty Smith, wife of the late Bill Smith, inventor of Six Sigma at Motorola. As one of the participants said, “A great big 'thanks' to Mrs. Smith for sharing her thoughts about Bill’s work. Mrs. Smith talk was totally awesome and genuine.” Smith was given an Honorary Six Sigma Master Black Belt at the event.

“I believe it was simply a great enjoyable experience for everyone demonstrating that learning Six Sigma can be fun” says Gupta.