Isaac Newton is a technical trainer at Minitab Ltd, the leading providers of statistical software as used by many organisations in their Six Sigma deployments. Isaac joined Minitab after attaining a degree in physics at Leicester University and after moving into Minitab’s Training department, Isaac undertook Six Sigma Black Belt training with ASI – QS. He is now responsible for teaching both the statistical tools in Minitab® Statistical Software, and the soft tools used in Quality Companion®.
improvementandinnovation.com: How does Minitab support a Six Sigma programme?
Isaac Newton: In 1995 the Six Sigma Academy were looking to build a relationship with a statistical software company in order to improve the Six Sigma tools available in the software market and make them more accessible to potential users. As the Six Sigma Academy founders were familiar with Minitab’s functionality, they approached us to improve the software capability, so this was how a lot of the statistical tools became included.
Originally the statistical methods such as capability analysis, control charts, etc. were expanded as they were the easiest functionalities to understand, as well as all the analysis tools to really dig into your data such as regression, Design of Experiments, etc. Together these Minitab features provide all the statistical processes that you would associate with being able to prove an effect and track a process.
Since then Minitab have moved on to develop Quality Companion, an application which provides everything you need to manage an improvement project. Over the years process improvement leaders have been keeping all the information about the tools they should use – like FMEA, Flow Charts, Brainstorms etc – in separate software packages. They’ve been scattered across programmes like Excel, Powerpoint or Word, in lots of different locations. Quality Companion eradicates that disruptive system by centralising your project files and providing you with all the soft tools that you would need to use in Six Sigma and Lean, or any kind of quality initiative.
Is that an add-on for Minitab?
No, it’s a stand-alone package. The third version of the software came out in January 2009. The main new feature of the latest version gives you the opportunity to really customise your data. The big attraction being that if you’ve got all the tools in one form, you can link data between all your files so that you only have to type something in once. Then if you’re tracking savings, financials, etc, all the information is being held together in one central location.
We’ve listened to requests from our customers regarding their requirements for Quality Companion and the software now has custom data fields that can be built into your project and can then be reported out into the Quality Companion Dashboard so that you can pull in your own data then track your progress and results.
So this is a tool to support projects?
It’s more than that. The software started off focusing on the projects themselves, being able to track them through the Roadmap, so that you would have access to all of the tools needed for a single project in the software. Naturally, questions were then asked such as: “We have all this data about these projects. I’m a Master Black Belt and I want to know what all my Green Belts are doing: how do we track that?” This is how the Dashboard was created. It’s a simple webpage that can point a user to where their files are stored on their network, and then it pulls all the information they may need such as how complete the project is, how much savings can be expected, final savings, and so on.
Does this have a knowledge management aspect then?
Quality Companion is being seen as a repository for the projects themselves, as well as a method for knowledge transfer because the projects are contained in single files. This makes it a lot easier for users to go back and pull out all the information, to then track through the project and see what happened when, who was involved and what tools have been used.
In terms of other methodologies, is this looking beyond Six Sigma now?
There’s always been a need to look beyond Six Sigma and Minitab has always believed that our software is not just a Six Sigma tool. A lot of the functions in Minitab are proven methods from the days of Shewart, etc. All these tools have been combined to use in Six Sigma and to create a new way of working which has been very beneficial.
Minitab certainly doesn’t need to be used solely in a Six Sigma environment. It has everything that anyone running data analysis would want to use, and certainly the soft tools within Quality Companion are the same. You can use the functions on a stand-alone basis, as well as within a project as a whole. I’ve done lots of different things with it; building my own forms for just stand-alone bits and pieces without going into the whole project. I’ve even built a form to track how much money I have going into my account and how much comes out – rather depressingly! But it’s all very easily pulled together in there so I don’t have to do it in Excel. I’ve put it into a very interactive, visual form, and just used that on its own. Every month I go back to it and add a form on. I have now been tracking it for about two years and can look back all the money coming in and going out.
How are products like these developed?
Minitab is customer-driven. We take a lot of customer feedback about their needs from our training courses, and whilst I haven’t been involved in developing the products themselves, the feedback I take is very eagerly awaited, monitored and taken into account for future action. The questions that come in from our Technical Support department also provide a lot of feedback, and that’s another source of information about what the customer would like to see from our products.
What would you say is the biggest challenge facing the people you are training?
One of the hardest things is translating measures from a manufacturing environment to a transactional environment. You still need to have a measure to prove that you have improved something.
Do you find Minitab is being used in transactional environments?
Absolutely! I’ve been to a few banks and financial investment organisations over the years as well as pharmaceutical, manufacturing and automotive companies. The software is used universally – it’s not really limited to any one business area.
