About us · Quality Statement
What quality means at The Lean Six Sigma Company
Quality at The Lean Six Sigma Company means doing the right things for the customer: professionally, reliably, responsibly and with continuous improvement, so that people grow stronger, organisations improve, and the improvement lasts.
Who we are
What does The Lean Six Sigma Company stand for?
The Lean Six Sigma Company was founded in Rotterdam in 2002 and has focused exclusively on Lean Six Sigma ever since. We have trained more than 50,000 professionals in over 4,000 organisations, in more than 40 countries across five continents.
We are Lean Six Sigma specialists, first and foremost: it is all we do, and all we have done for more than two decades. We are focused on results rather than certificates for their own sake. We value reliability and robustness in what we deliver, respect for the privacy and the information entrusted to us, and accessibility and inclusiveness in how we teach: learning with us should be understandable, applicable and genuinely enjoyable. And we invest in our people, because the quality of our services can never exceed the quality of the professionals who deliver them.
Our vision. To create a world where organisations perform better because quality, cost and customer focus no longer compete with one another, and where people have the skills, the habits and the confidence to streamline processes, growing stronger as they do.
Our mission. We turn organisations into Continuous Improvement Driven Organisations through Lean Six Sigma training, coaching and deployment of the Total Improvement Framework.
The vision is the destination; the mission is the route. Everything on this page describes how we hold ourselves to the second while working towards the first.
More about our history and our people can be found in our story.
Our definition
What does quality mean at The Lean Six Sigma Company?
At The Lean Six Sigma Company, quality means delivering services that are professional, reliable, responsible and improvement-driven: services that help individuals grow and help organisations improve. We judge quality by outcome, not by process compliance.
Our pay-off is Raising Standards, and on this page it is literally true three times over. We work to international standards. We exist to raise our customers’ standards towards their own customers. And we apply the continuous improvement we teach to ourselves, every day.
We are also deliberate about what quality does not mean. It does not mean reinventing Lean Six Sigma with extra belt colours or method mixes: we stay true to the roots of the discipline and let it evolve, without transforming it into something else. Modern additions, such as AI, earn their place by making the method more accessible and more effective, never by replacing its core.
Quality begins in how The Lean Six Sigma Company operates, and extends into how we teach, how we protect information, how we secure our systems, and how we use AI. Each is set out below, together with what it means for you, followed by the complete record of our certifications and the organisations that have already assessed us.
Quality at the core
How does The Lean Six Sigma
Company operate?
The Lean Six Sigma Company delivers training, consulting, workshops and improvement deployment through managed, documented processes, so the standard of what you receive does not depend on which trainer, which country or which format you happen to book. Those processes are not ours to grade alone: BSI certifies our quality management system against ISO 9001, the international standard for quality management, for the delivery of training and coaching in the execution and application of Lean Six Sigma. The teaching itself is inside the certified scope, not adjacent to it.
That consistency covers every format we deliver, from open training to in-company programmes to full deployment. For an organisation choosing a training partner, it makes our quality a checkable answer rather than a promise, and something that can be defended in any supplier review. For everyone who trains with us, it means the outcome does not rest on a single trainer’s talent.
And we judge our own service quality the way we teach our customers to judge theirs: by whether the problem moved. Improvement is measurable, not theatre. Anyone who has to justify an investment in training or improvement internally should hold us to exactly that standard.
Since 2024, ISO 9001 also requires certified organisations to determine whether climate change is a relevant issue for their quality management system. The Lean Six Sigma Company’s certified system therefore considers climate change as part of the context in which we plan and deliver services.
Improvement deployment is delivered through the Total Improvement Framework, built to integrate with an organisation’s existing management systems and structure, including those based on ISO 9001, rather than competing with them. Nobody should have to choose between the management system they already run and a Lean Six Sigma deployment. How the framework works is set out on our deployment page.
Quality of education
How does The Lean Six Sigma
Company teach, and what does it
teach?
What this means for your certificate is set out in Our Certification Value
At The Lean Six Sigma Company, education is built around the learner: courses designed to be clear, practical and applicable in a real organisational setting, taught and coached by practising improvement professionals, with learning outcomes that are measured rather than assumed. Separate certifications stand behind that, and they do not overlap. BSI certifies the delivery of our training and coaching against ISO 9001. Kiwa certifies the system that designs and maintains the curriculum, the methodologies and the examinations against ISO 21001. Kiwa certifies the course content itself against ISO 18404 and ISO 13053.
How we teach
The Lean Six Sigma Company treats the learner as a distinct interested party with distinct needs. That is what ISO 21001 adds to a general quality standard. Our certification against it covers the design and maintenance of everything a learner encounters, the curriculum, the methodologies and the examinations, and Kiwa audits that rather than taking it on trust. The clearest example is how examinations are built.
Examinations must be demonstrably linked to the learning outcomes they assess, and the grading system must be defined and validated (clause 8.3.4.4). Our certification criteria and examination questions are derived from ISO 13053 and ISO 18404. A test matrix records which subjects each examination covers, and draft examinations are reviewed by a practising Master Black Belt, Black Belt or Lean Expert before release.
Who is allowed to teach is governed with the same discipline, and it is audited rather than asserted: delivery of training and coaching is the certified scope of our ISO 9001 quality management system, which BSI audits. Every trainer works to a documented job profile for their role, passes the examination they will go on to teach, and co-delivers with an experienced trainer before teaching alone. A skill matrix records which courses each trainer is cleared to deliver, and trainers are observed by a peer at least twice a year, with the findings going into their development plan.
What happens after an examination sits in that same certified system, which makes these commitments rather than courtesies. A learner is told their result, can appeal it, can see their own work and its assessment, and receives documented evidence of the outcome. Grades stay traceable to the work submitted: at The Lean Six Sigma Company every manual correction to an examination score is logged, so the connection between the work and the grade stays evidenced. If you ever needed to challenge a result, there is a documented route and a record, not a conversation.
Accessibility is not a footnote in ISO 21001. Accessibility and equity is one of the standard’s stated principles, defined as being inclusive, flexible, transparent and accountable so that learners’ individual needs, interests, abilities and backgrounds are addressed. In the work our certification covers, that principle has teeth: learning materials must be produced in formats that take accessibility needs into account (clause 7.5.2), and appropriate, accessible teaching methods and learning environments must be planned into the design of every programme (clause 8.1.2). A programme is also specified before it is offered, down to its costs, prerequisites and expectations, so that nobody has to discover a barrier after enrolling.
The Lean Six Sigma Company teaches working professionals from every kind of background and every level of prior education, in a second or third language as often as not. Making the method genuinely reachable is therefore not a compliance exercise for us; it is most of the job. It is also why certification matters here rather than a statement of intent: an auditor asks what we actually do about accessibility, and a good answer has to be evidenced.
None of that is a satisfaction score. It is an audited system, and it is the answer to put in front of whoever holds the budget. Certification against ISO 21001 is uncommon among Lean Six Sigma training providers, and holding it alongside a delivery scope certified to ISO 9001 is what lets us describe both how a course is built and how it is taught without changing the subject.
What we teach
Our curriculum is not our private opinion about what a Lean Practitioner, or a Green Belt, should know: it is measured against an international definition of the role. We offer standalone Lean roles, Lean Practitioner, Lean Leader and Lean Expert, and combined Lean & Six Sigma roles, Green Belt, Black Belt and Master Black Belt (including the separate manufacturing and service variants of Black Belt), each certified against the standard’s requirements for that role. ISO 13053 defines the Six Sigma methodology itself (part 1) and its tools and techniques (part 2), as taught in our Lean & Six Sigma training material.
Whether you take a course yourself or train your people, the consequence is the same: the certificate is backed by an audited educational system, and the curriculum behind it is certified against the international definition of the role it prepares you for. A Black Belt trained with The Lean Six Sigma Company was trained against the competency requirements the standard defines for a Black Belt. The certification applies to the course content; participants who complete a programme earn a certificate from The Lean Six Sigma Company.
Data protection
How does The Lean Six Sigma
Company protect your data?
The Lean Six Sigma Company handles participant records, exam results and the organisational information encountered during improvement projects under defined controls, and processes personal data in accordance with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, Regulation (EU) 2016/679) under an approved internal procedure.
Your rights under that regulation are not small print at The Lean Six Sigma Company. You can ask which of our systems hold your personal data, request a copy of it, or ask us to remove it. Requests run through our back office, are answered within two working days, are logged, and we confirm to you what has been done. Where we can delete data we do. Examination and certification records are the exception: we keep those, because a certificate we cannot evidence is a certificate that means nothing.
Examination data is held on our own servers in the European Union. Personal contact details are held in our customer relationship system, hosted in the United States by our supplier under the Standard Contractual Clauses that the GDPR recognises for transfers outside the European Economic Area.
For anyone completing a security questionnaire about us, that is the specific and honest answer. For everyone who trains with us, it is a plain commitment: exam results and personal data are handled under defined rules. And the organisational information we encounter during improvement projects, from process data to operational weaknesses, does not become someone else’s case study.
Cybersecurity
How does The Lean Six Sigma
Company secure its systems?
The Lean Six Sigma Company secures the systems that hold customer and participant information, with access restricted to what each role requires and every control documented.
ISO/IEC 27001, the international standard for information security management, serves as our reference framework. We are not certified against ISO/IEC 27001, and we say so plainly.
Documented procedures cover how we respond when something goes wrong, including the loss or theft of equipment, and every response is logged. If customer data were ever affected, we would inform the customer. New systems are developed with security and the GDPR’s provisions in mind from the start.
Responsible and conscious use of AI
How does The Lean Six Sigma
Company use AI?
The Lean Six Sigma Company integrates customised AI agents into its training with a defined purpose: to enhance the learning experience and to improve the success rate of participants’ improvement projects. AI supports practice, preparation and application; assessment and certification decisions are made by people. ISO/IEC 42001, the international standard for AI management systems, serves as our reference framework. We are not certified against it.
For participants, AI is part of the learning experience rather than a shortcut past it. Customised AI agents support the whole arc of an improvement project, in class and between sessions:
Where AI supports our customers
- Practice exams and exam preparation
- Sparring and step-by-step guidance through DMAIC and A3
- Problem statements, tollgate reviews and stakeholder preparation
- Clarifying class topics and deep dives into specific tools
Where our people decide
- Assessment and certification decisions
- Teaching, coaching and responsibility for the curriculum
- Which improvements are worth making in a customer’s organisation, and which our trainers and coaches will stand behind
The Lean Six Sigma Company also uses AI in its own work: analysing reports and project documentation, supporting internal IT development, and producing the online course content, including AI video materials, used to onboard and update our own colleagues. We practise internally what we offer participants, and we hold both to the same standard: a tool earns its place by measurably improving the outcome.
Our AI agents are provided through Pickaxe. Depending on the model selected, queries and uploaded files may be processed by AI providers such as OpenAI or Anthropic, which means information entered into an agent is processed outside The Lean Six Sigma Company’s own systems. We use a privacy-focused Pickaxe plan designed to prevent prompts, queries and uploads from being used by Pickaxe or its AI providers for purposes such as model training or service improvement. Even so, we advise participants at the point of use not to enter personal, confidential or commercially sensitive information, because the safest data is the data that was never submitted.
Wherever AI is used at The Lean Six Sigma Company, it supports people rather than replacing their judgement, and we are specific about what that means in practice. An AI agent does not mark your examination, does not decide whether you are certified, and does not assess your improvement project. It does not teach a class, and it does not own any part of the curriculum. When we advise an organisation on what to change, that recommendation is made by a trainer or coach who is accountable for it, not generated and passed on. The work an AI agent does is preparation, practice and explanation, and a person is answerable for every decision that follows it.
The record
Is The Lean Six Sigma Company ISO certified?
Yes, at two distinct levels. Management system standards certify how The Lean Six Sigma Company operates. Content standards certify what it teaches. Most training providers can point to one; we are certified against both, and use two further standards as reference frameworks where we are not certified.
Management System standards: How we operate
Content and competency standards: What we teach
Each certification can be verified directly with the body that issued it. BSI and Kiwa both
maintain public registers of the organisations they certify, and we provide certificate details
on request to anyone assessing us as a supplier.
Assessed as a supplier
Which organisations have already assessed The Lean Six Sigma Company?
Before The Lean Six Sigma Company is appointed as a supplier, it is assessed as one. Organisations with demanding procurement, legal and compliance requirements do not contract a training provider without checking it first. Internationally, the organisations we work with include Adidas, Ayvens, Coca-Cola Hellenic, DS Smith, Grifols, Siemens Energy and Unilever. In the United Kingdom, they include Amazon, Eurostar, the Ministry of Defence, QBE and University College London.
We treat that as a further form of external validation, alongside certification. It is not an endorsement, and we do not present it as one: these are completed checks, carried out by teams whose job is to be hard to satisfy, covering much of the same ground this page covers, from quality management to data protection.
Continuous improvement
How does The Lean Six Sigma Company continue to improve?
The Lean Six Sigma Company maintains the same feedback loop it teaches: participant evaluation after every programme, internal audits, management review and corrective action, all under the ISO 9001 and ISO 21001 certified systems described above, covering delivery and design respectively.
We apply to ourselves the continuous improvement we teach. That sentence is easy to write and demanding to live, which is why the mechanisms above are audited rather than asserted.
What this means for you
What can you expect from The Lean
Six Sigma Company?
Whether you are choosing a course for yourself, developing your people, assessing us as a supplier, or selecting a partner for an organisation-wide improvement programme, the commitments on this page mean the same thing: quality you can check rather than take on trust.
You can expect to be taught by someone who has run improvement projects rather than only read about them, and to be examined on what you were actually taught. You can expect the same programme in every country and every format we deliver it in. You can expect direct answers about data, security and AI rather than reassuring ones, including the places where we are not certified and say so. And if your legal or compliance team has questions about any of it, the sections above are written to be checked, not merely read.
Every one of those is something you can verify, not simply something we promise. That is what quality means at The Lean Six Sigma Company.
Questions
Questions about quality at The Lean Six Sigma Company
The Lean Six Sigma Company maintains the same feedback loop it teaches: participant evaluation after every programme, internal audits, management review and corrective action, all under the ISO 9001 and ISO 21001 certified systems described above, covering delivery and design respectively.
We apply to ourselves the continuous improvement we teach. That sentence is easy to write and demanding to live, which is why the mechanisms above are audited rather than asserted.
1. Is The Lean Six Sigma Company ISO certified?
Yes, at two levels. Its management systems are certified against ISO 9001 (quality management, by BSI) and ISO 21001 (educational organisation management, by Kiwa). Separately, its course content is certified against ISO 18404 and ISO 13053, also by Kiwa. ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 42001 serve as reference frameworks and are not certifications.
2. Is The Lean Six Sigma Company ASQ certified?
No, and no training provider is. ASQ, the American Society for Quality, certifies individual people rather than organisations: an ASQ certification records that a named person has demonstrated proficiency in a defined body of knowledge, and ASQ does not operate a certification or accreditation programme for training providers. So there is no such status as an ASQ certified organisation for The Lean Six Sigma Company to hold. An individual may of course hold an ASQ certification, and many good practitioners do. The Lean Six Sigma Company’s own certifications are organisational and are listed above.
3. Is The Lean Six Sigma Company IASSC certified?
IASSC, the International Association for Six Sigma Certification, certifies individuals through its examinations and separately accredits training organisations that align their material to the IASSC Body of Knowledge. So organisational accreditation does exist here, unlike with ASQ, and it is worth understanding what it is and is not. It records alignment to a body of knowledge that IASSC itself owns and maintains, it is granted on application with a fee payable at application and renewal, and IASSC states plainly that accrediting an organisation does not constitute its approval or recognition of that organisation’s own certificates or certification programme. The Lean Six Sigma Company’s course content is instead certified against ISO 18404 and ISO 13053, which are international standards developed through ISO rather than owned by any single organisation, and that certification is issued by Kiwa.
4. Which programmes does the ISO 18404 certification cover?
Kiwa certifies The Lean Six Sigma Company’s course content for its standalone Lean programmes, Lean Practitioner, Lean Leader and Lean Expert, and for its combined Lean and Six Sigma programmes, Green Belt, Black Belt and Master Black Belt, including the separate manufacturing and service variants of Black Belt. Yellow Belt is not covered, because ISO 18404 excludes it from the standard’s own scope.
5. What is ISO 21001 and why does it matter for training?
ISO 21001 is the international standard for management systems of educational organisations. It requires a provider to document how curricula and assessments are designed, to evidence the competence of the people who teach, and to give learners a right of appeal against their results. Kiwa certifies the design and maintenance of The Lean Six Sigma Company’s curriculum, methodologies and materials against it.
6. How does The Lean Six Sigma Company use AI in its training?
The Lean Six Sigma Company integrates customised AI agents that support participants with practice exams, sparring, and step-by-step guidance through improvement projects, from problem statements to tollgate preparation. Internally, AI supports analysis, IT development and internal training content. Assessment and certification decisions are made by people. ISO/IEC 42001 serves as the reference framework; The Lean Six Sigma Company is not certified against it.
7. How does The Lean Six Sigma Company protect participant data?
Personal data of participants is processed in accordance with the European GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) under an approved internal procedure: you can ask which systems hold your data, request a copy, or ask for it to be removed; requests are logged and answered within two working days. Examination and certification records are retained, as the evidence behind certificates. Organisational information encountered during improvement projects is treated confidentially.
8. How does The Lean Six Sigma Company secure its systems?
Access to systems holding customer and participant information is restricted to what each role requires, and documented procedures cover how The Lean Six Sigma Company responds to incidents. ISO/IEC 27001 serves as the reference framework; The Lean Six Sigma Company is not certified against it.
9. Does ISO 9001 cover sustainability?
In part. Amendment 1 (2024) to ISO 9001 requires organisations to determine whether climate change is a relevant issue for their quality management system. It does not make ISO 9001 a sustainability standard. The Lean Six Sigma Company’s certified system therefore considers climate change as part of the context in which services are planned and delivered.
10. What is The Lean Six Sigma Company's mission?
The Lean Six Sigma Company, founded in Rotterdam in 2002, helps organisations and individuals throughout the world to excel in their business by providing accessible, high quality and globally standardised Lean Six Sigma training and services. It has focused exclusively on Lean Six Sigma since its founding, and has trained more than 50,000 professionals in over 4,000 organisations across more than 40 countries.