Sonoco Products Company/Operations and Supply Chain Center Lean-Six Sigma Green Belt program

The Sonoco Products Company and the Operations and Supply Chain Center have teamed up to offer a Green Belt Certification opportunity to Moore School Operations & Supply Chain students through a two-phase process:

Phase 1: Green Belt Training and Readiness Exam

Sonoco’s Green Belt Training is an e-learning course spanning 18 modules paralleling the ASQ Green Belt body of knowledge and the George Consulting Group training program. The Green Belt readiness exam requires about 100 hours of preparation.

Students in the USC Operations & Supply Chain program are required to complete this training through the online e-learning course from Sonoco Products Company. Students then take a Green Belt exam covering the Sonoco curriculum. The exam consists of 100 questions and is closed-book and closed-notes. The passing threshold is 80 out of 100. USC students get only one opportunity to take and pass the exam.

Phase 2: Green Belt-Certified Project

Students plan and execute a significant operations/process improvement consulting project in their Operations & Supply Chain consulting project course of the program in one of the partner firms of the Operations and Supply Chain Center. Current members of the Operations and Supply Chain Center are BMW, Carolina HealthCare Systems/Atrium Health, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Continental Tire, Cummins (Turbo Technologies Division), Daimler, E-Z-GO Textron, Johnson & Johnson, McLeod Health, Michelin USA, Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Siemens AG, Smith & Nephew, Sonoco Products Company, Trane-Ingersoll Rand and UTC Aerospace Systems. 

The project is executed by a team of four to six student analysts, mentored by principal consultant (faculty mentor), in conjunction with client team over a three-month span. It typically involves a work content of about 500 man hours of the team’s work. The project deliverables include midterm and final presentations, piloting of improvements and detailed cost-benefits and control plan for improved process.

The project is evaluated jointly by the director of certification from UofSC Operations and Supply Chain Program and the Corporate Lean-Six-Sigma Champion from Sonoco Products Company for greenbelt certification. If a project is Green Belt-worthy, detailed assessment of individual team member’s contributions to the project is conducted through peer evaluation, principal consultant’s assessment and Sonoco’s interview of the team members.

Only when a student meets all the criteria of Phase 1 and Phase 2 specified as follows is he or she awarded the “Sonoco Lean-Six-Sigma Green Belt Certificate”:

• Pass the Green Belt Exam (closed-book, closed notes, one attempt) with a score of 80 or more out of 100.
• Complete a project with the Operations and Supply Chain Center firm that is certified jointly to be greenbelt-worthy by Sonoco Lean-Six-Sigma Champion and USC Director of Lean-Six-Sigma Certification.
• Contribute satisfactorily (both participation extent and quality) on the project team as assessed by the project team peers through peer evaluation survey, by principal consultant throughout the project and by the Sonoco Champion through project team members’ interviews at the conclusion.