Cleveland State University
EN-12: Continuing Education

The Sustainable Business Center nurtures sustainable ideas and creates conditions conducive to learning, sharing best practices and connecting to innovative solutions. The Center serves businesses, faculty and students using best practices to integrate sustainability initiatives to create a triple impact socially, environmentally and financially. COURSES SIX SIGMA YELLOW BELT Six Sigma assists organizations to reduce waste and be more effective and efficient with all organizational processes and materials. Six Sigma strategies can help companies reach more aggressive triple bottom line performance goals. This course will present a 14-hour curriculum designed to attain the Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification. It will explain the strategic role of Six Sigma within an organization, the cultural shifts that may occur, the phases of a Six Sigma project, support expectations of a Six Sigma team, project success factors and how to sponsor a Six Sigma project. SIX SIGMA GREEN BELT Six Sigma assists organizations to reduce waste and be more effective and efficient with all organizational processes and materials. Six Sigma strategies can help companies reach more aggressive triple bottom line performance goals. This course will present a 36-hour curriculum designed to attain the Six Sigma Green Belt certification. It will develop the strategic role of Six Sigma within an organization, the cultural shifts that may occur, the phases of a Six Sigma project, procedures for developing a Six Sigma project plan, project success factors and the completion of a Six Sigma project. SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING What makes a good sustainability report? Why do companies spend time developing non-financial disclosures? Who really cares about a company’s social and environmental activities anyway? This course teaches the difference between high quality disclosure and greenwashing and the difference between companies who get value from reporting and those that do not. LEED V4 GREEN ASSOCIATE This course covers the fundamental concepts of green building and is intended for design, construction and real estate professionals, building owners or anyone who wants to develop their knowledge in this area. The course will prepare students to earn the LEED Green Associate credential from the Green Building Certification Institute. Also available: LEED AP BD+C Exam Prep & Study Group LEED v4 Accredited Professional for Existing Buildings: Operations + Maintenance Exam Prep & Study Group LEED v4 Green Associate Exam Prep & Study Group LEAN PRINCIPLES The core idea of LEAN is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources. Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems. The ultimate goal is to deliver value by creating processes that have zero waste and are able to be continuously improved. THINKING LEAN LEAN thinking seeks to minimize waste in organization processes. This simulation is designed to give each participant an experiential understanding of the effects of changes in the workplace. Participants test which changes work best: increased inventory, overtime, pull vs. push system, large and small batches, balanced workloads and more. It positions the participants to manage their own work in such a way as to create more capacity, reduce waste, reduce cost, and improve the quality of their product.