Improvement Specialist Level 5 Apprenticeship

Improvement Specialist Apprenticeship

Improvement Specialist Apprenticeship Standard (Level 5) is now offered by Claudius Consulting via in-house tailored or open enrolment programmes with several intakes per year delivered face-to-face or virtually. Our unique high quality programme allows employees to meet the Improvement Specialist Level 5 standard whilst also achieving industry leading British Quality Foundation (BQF) Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification at no additional cost.

Apprenticeship Levy or ESFA Funding

If you are an employer with an annual wage bill of more than £3m, you pay an Apprenticeship Levy of 0.5% on payroll collected through PAYE. Levy funds are collected every month by HMRC and held in your Digital Apprenticeship Service (DAS) online account. You can use this to pay for Improvement Apprenticeships. If your annual wage bill is less than £3m, you are entitled to co-investment funding where the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) pay 95% and the employer 5% of the apprenticeship costs.

Who can be an Apprentice?

Apprenticeships aren’t just for school leavers or young people. Improvement Apprenticeships are for anybody who’s role involves improving organisational performance. Our clients Improvement Apprentices come from all service and manufacturing sectors and range from graduate trainees and shop floor team leaders through to experienced functional managers, project managers and technical specialists.

Your Trainers

Your BQF Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt trainers hold a Professional Graduate Certificate in Education (Lifelong Learning) which certifies their competence in curriculum development, training delivery, coaching and trainee assessment. This combined with them each having 15+ years of service and manufacturing lean six sigma training, coaching and project delivery experience makes them ‘best-in-class’ in Improvement Apprenticeship delivery.

What is Lean Six Sigma?

‘Lean Six Sigma’ is powerful combination of the ‘Lean’ and ‘Six Sigma’ methodologies. ‘Lean’ has a focus on eliminating process waste, increasing process speed and minimising lead times. ‘Six Sigma’ has a focus on eliminating process defects and process variation. The principles are applicable to both the manufacturing and service sectors.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of the Improvement Specialist Apprenticeship Standard, participants will be able to:

• Ensure their improvement projects are linked to the achievement of their organisation’s strategic objectives
• Capture the ‘Voice of the Customer’ to ensure any potential business process changes are aligned to customer requirements
• Apply the simple, robust, structured and proven approach of DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve & Control) to process improvement
• Apply project management, change management and financial project appraisal techniques
• Move from a ‘Functional’ to a ‘Value Stream’ view of the organisation where stakeholders work together collectively to remove waste from the ‘Value Stream’
• Understand ‘Process Behaviour’ through effective measurement and data analysis
• Prioritise opportunities for process improvement
• Develop ‘Permanent Corrective Actions’ for process failures
• Select and use the appropriate Lean Six Sigma tools to reduce variation, defects, cycle times, lead times, waste and costs within their processes
• Influence organisational culture and employee behaviour towards supporting Lean Six Sigma
• Ensure process improvements are sustained through the use of a ‘Control Plan’
• Train and coach others in Lean Six Sigma

Benefits to Your Organisation

The benefits of the Improvement Specialist Apprenticeship Standard is that it supports:

• Development of internal capability to deliver process improvements on an ongoing and sustainable basis
• Development of a ‘Continuous Improvement Culture’
• ’Financial benefits delivery i.e. revenue improvement, cost reductions and cost avoidance