Question is raised in the title. Would any green belt / black belt six sigma training be useful in FP&A, specifically in operations finance for a manufacturing company? Only threads I could find were very old and related more to financial services. I would think that the process improvement ethos would be useful in finding ways to improve processes that could lead to cost savings.
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My experience with 6sigma has been that it is "creativity for uncreative people". Maybe this is more exclusive to my company, but my experience has been that the creative/high performers always seem to have a mentality of process improvement, finding new ways to automate things and save time, etc. Six Sigma is a way to try to teach that mentality to the people to whom it does not come naturally.
If your question is whether having a green belt on your resume looks good, I'd say it's definitely a good "Nice to have". I list my six sigma certification on my resume. But in reality my experience on projects has been that it really only benefits people who aren't naturally creative, and since more of those kinds of people exist than we think, most companies like to push it.
EDIT: Just read your post again, and I see that you are asking if the training itself would be useful in FP&A. I did a year in FP&A and also did six sigma training. My thought is that if you already have a tendency toward process improvement and do not just accept manual processes when you know there has got to be a better way, Six Sigma training won't be of any benefit besides a bullet point on your resume. If you think you could sharpen your mentality on process improvement, then go for it. But remember, six sigma is designed to help everyone, so it caters to the lowest common denominator. A lot of the training will make you go "Well, DUH."
Literally how I feel about it as well. Have been going through the material so I can up skill on the manufacturing side but it wasn't really what I expected.
Agree with this. If you have a process improvement mindset you likely dont need it, but if you dont it may be helpful. That said, it looks pretty good on a resume to most companies. Also, manufacturing will often use these tools so even if you dont apply it directly to FP&A it would be good to know for an Ops Finance role at a manufacturer.
Yeah I guess useful and resume bullet point aren't necessarily interchangeable. Sounds like the resume bullet point would be nice though, just that the training itself doesn't add much value. I would consider myself someone who always looks to add value and improve processes, but feel like this is a tangible way to show that, outside of actual process improvements. I'm thinking this could be a good way to add a certification that is mildly useful to myself and the company, and my company is sponsoring/promoting the training so could only help on that front. Think it could be useful as well on the manufacturing front as I'm dealing with the financials of plants, so could be nice to speak their language.
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