Consultants’ Open Day, Minitab UK Training Centre

Six Sigma consultants saw Minitab’s Quality Companion 2 put through its paces at Minitab’s Training Centre in Coventry on Thursday. 5th Oct. Representing a wide cross section of industry, including manufacturing, transactional, and financial services, under the guidance of Claire Hartley , consultants were soon navigating through Quality Companions vast array of Six Sigma and Lean tools, modifying Phases, Forms, and Checklists.

According to Minitab’s Claire Hartley , Quality Companion is not limited to Six Sigma, and it is entirely flexible due to its intuitive visual user interface, which makes it easy to customize standard company processes, phases, and forms. It even includes Project Management, Y=F(X) and a Presentation Tool, which interfaces seamlessly with data stored in Project files, to avoid having to multiplex between several programs. This minimises the amount of time people spend at their desks transcribing data, analysing data, and formatting reports.

One of the problems solved by Minitab is its ability to facilitate ‘foreign workshops’ using a ‘local’ software coach; so it’s no longer necessary to send a Black belt overseas to facilitate workshops, but allows local ‘Green belts’ to follow a predefined process using shared resources.

For example, a Design Workshop in Step 1 might comprises a business case, a problem opportunity statement, a goal statement, project scope; constraints and assumptions, team formation, a preliminary project plan, a project charter, and Stakeholder Analysis.

Step 2, might comprise identification of customer requirements, analyzing and prioritising customer requirements.

Step 3 might comprise Identifying and Documenting the Process (As is) using SIPOC. Quality Companion also includes Balloting, Cause and Effect Diagrams, C&E Matrix, and many other tools supported with detailed help files and an active ‘quality coach.’

The software includes tutorials that allow a user to achieve a satisfactory level of confidence without having to attend a class, although an advanced user may want to learn some of the more advanced capabilities of the program.

Followers of other methodologies, such as Lean and TPS will also be able to take advantage of Minitab’s Quality Companion, since it is possible to customize processes and forms quickly and easily, such as value stream mapping, which can be demarcated by ‘work station’, or activity.

In conclusion, I believe Quality Companion will be an invaluable tool for those interested in paying attention to detail, but at the same time unwilling to spend hours or even days inputting and collating data, and writing reports. My estimation for time saving would be a 50% reduction – especially for inexperienced teams, with limited training, having to run their own workshops without the direct support of an ‘experienced’ Black belt.

This Review was written by Andy Urquhart, Senior Consultant and Master Black Belt, onesixsigma.com Associate