About Open Source Six Sigma

Hello, my name is Scot Shank. I’m the creator of Open Source Six Sigma (OSSS). I worked as a Lean Six Sigma consultant for several years before I founded Open Source Six Sigma in 2008. Since then Open Source Six Sigma has grown to license Lean Six Sigma training courses to thousands of organizations and learners across the world.

Today, aiming to continue the spirit of Open Source Six Sigma’s mission to bring high-quality Lean Six Sigma training content to students, professionals, and organizations across the world in simple, efficient ways and at economically feasible costs, I’ve transitioned Open Source Six Sigma to offer a platform that delivers on-demand direct-to-end-user training. We call it SixCamp. Whether to train your employees, students, customers, or even learn Lean Six Sigma yourself, we have a place for you here with SixCamp.

this is how we do what we do.

First and foremost, we focus on great content for learners

Lean Six Sigma course content is at our core. Thanks to many Lean Six Sigma experts, our content roots from a long lineage in Lean Six Sigma that stretches all the way back to Motorola, before Lean was even a part of the method, and, it has been refined and updated many times over the years.

Some of you may be very familiar with our legacy products that have been used by thousands of organizations, trainers and students. Our SixCamp courses are built directly upon these popular products. Now, they have been updated to specifically reference the latest PC-IASSC body of knowledge, the most current versions of SigmaXL & Minitab statistical calculators, and completely reformatted to teach every single slide, in every single deck, with detailed video instruction thanks to our friend Dave Dipree, a talented Lean Six Sigma instructor and veteran in our industry.

Each topic is delivered by teaching the theory, demonstrating step-by-step examples to explain how each tool works itself and in concert with the larger problem-solving strategy and method. We strive to use examples that can be applicable and understood in any industry, business sector or educational institution. This is the approach by which we teach the “Lean Six Sigma Method.”

Lean Six Sigma is a problem-solving methodology, a compilation of tools that when used in a defined protocol help to achieve breakthrough results. One of our primary goals with SixCamp is to be the best we can possibly be at teaching this method. Checkout our SixCamp courses and we believe you'll see for yourself the efforts that have gone into us aiming to make these the best Lean Six Sigma courses ever created.

Next, we make sure it’s packaged in great formats

We package our courses in ways that makes it really easy for our customers to use, and, balance that with the manner in which we want to operate as a business.

Our products allow everyone from solo individuals, to small teams to giant multinational organizations and governments to start training within minutes. Our Personal Plan or Professional Plan is a hosted cloud-based solution that delivers our courses in our excellent and secure third-party Learning Management System (LMS) and our Enterprise Plan allows you to deliver our courses within your own LMS.

We’ve organized ourselves to operate a bit like a software provider. Our courses are our “codebase”. From this perspective we can be more agile and operate in a way that allows us to push or “ship” updates quickly that fix issues or enhance content to our courses. These are automatically received by all customers; from the solo student learning in his dorm room, to the MBA professional working from his fancy multinational office.

It’s important for us to operate the way we want, it’s what makes our work fun, and we think it helps generate successful results. It also tends to make us more efficient and enables us to do our very best to deliver a great product.

Then, we make it accessible with smart licensing

Open Source Six Sigma licensing governs the terms & conditions under which we grant the rights for our customers to use our intellectual property. When you begin a SixCamp subscription or take a SixCamp course you are agreeing our terms & conditions.

It’s important that our licensing grants our customers the ability to use SixCamp in the manner in which they want to use it. It’s also important that our licenses protect our products that we invest our time, money and effort into creating. We have a license for our Personal Plan, Professional Plan and Enterprise Plan. We also have an End-User License that apply’s to anyone who conducts a SixCamp training courses on any system.

These agreements aim to be customer centric, fair and easy to understand. We don’t have a bunch of “fine print” nonsense and no “gotchas”, just the basic elements; use our stuff if you want to learn or provide Lean Six Sigma training to others, cancel anytime we don’t pin you into long-term contracts, respect our content and pay us for what we provide. Very. Simple.

Finally, we provide great support to our customers

We are committed to delivering outstanding customer support through two distinct channels: General Support and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Subject Matter Expert (SME) Support.

General Support:
This comprehensive support encompasses the purchase, utilization, and integration of SixCamp courses and Learning Management System. It includes technical expertise to facilitate the seamless integration of our content within your systems and environment. This support is provided at no cost and is subject to minimal limitations.

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Subject Matter Expert (SME) Support:
This includes the technical expertise to support your Program Managers, Team Members, Instructors, and Coaches throughout the entire organization, including End-User Learners. We offer a virtually unlimited amount of support to clarify the elements of our courses that you believe are incorrect or unclear. However, we do not provide LSS SME support to teach you Lean Six Sigma outside of the courseware. In other words, we are not your trainer. Organizations that utilize our courses typically provide in-house or contracted SME support to their learners. Individual learners may not always have access to this level of support, therefore, as a convenience, learners may purchase blocks of support for $195 per hour, fulfilled via email / chat / forum with a Master Black Belt instructor.

Our Goal:
In all matters, our objective is to promptly respond to your request by either acknowledging its receipt or providing a comprehensive solution within 48 business hours. You can reach us here, anytime.

International Association For Lean Six Sigma Certification

Title

My creation of Open Source Six Sigma and its adoption by many organizations, coupled with my prior experience as a Lean Six Sigma consultant lead me to research "Professional Credentialing Best-Practices and Standard Operating Procedures."

This work ultimately resulted in the development and formation of the International Association for Six Sigma Certification (IASSC) which I established in 2010 to serve as a professional association with an aim to bring ‘Certification Best Practices’ to our community.

IASSC has grown to become a respected professional certification standard and was wholly acquired in 2020 by The PeopleCert Group, a global leader in the assessment and certification of professional skills, for whom I still consult with today as an advisor.

Which brings me to the following formal technicality. Open Source Six Sigma’s parent company is Red Stake Inc, who maintains an ongoing, limited, financial interest in the performance of The International Association for Six Sigma Certification (IASSC) through its’ relationship with The PeopleCert Cert Group. Lawyers might call this a disclosure. Some people might call it a great selling point. Mostly I don’t think anyone really cares either way - except maybe a couple persnickety competitors. People just want really great Lean Six Sigma products & service, and thats exactly what we strive to deliver.

I’m proud of my work towards establishing a third-party industry standard certification body. I’m also very proud of the work that The PeopleCert Group is continuing to do with IASSC. Now I’m looking forward to the work we are doing at here at Open Source Six Sigma to bring you an excellent training platform that is well aligned with the PeopleCert IASSC body of knowledge. Thanks again for taking the time to learn about us and give SixCamp a try.

We Really Enjoy What We Do Here At OSSS

I have personally been involved in Lean Six Sigma in one way or another for more than 20 years and choose to continue my work in this market because I enjoy it.

We’re not SpaceX or the Mayo Clinic - we aren’t solving breakthrough world problems that benefit humanity and save lives. We’re just providing what we think is a really good, efficient Lean Six Sigma platform for the demands of today's Lean Six Sigma consumers so that you can deliver whats important to you.

Like anything, there are plenty of other good providers out there, this our version - we are proud of it and we sure hope that you enjoy it as much as we enjoy providing it. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me directly scot@opensourcesixisgma.com, I look forward to hearing from you.

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