Minitab's New Quality Companion Dashboard Provides Aggregate View of Six Sigma Projects
Free utility provides high-level summary view of Quality Companion project files.
State College, Pa. (Vocus) April 8, 2008
Minitab Inc. today released the Quality Companion Dashboard, an indispensable tool for users of Quality Companion by Minitab®. The Dashboard is a free utility that aggregates project data and lets Six Sigma professionals, managers and stakeholders view the progress of multiple projects simultaneously.
Minitab has also released Quality Companion 2.4, the latest update to the company’s process improvement software. The update is free to registered Quality Companion 2 users. A corresponding update to the free Quality Companion Viewer, which lets users share the information in a Quality Companion project file with anyone, also is available.
Quality Companion is used by companies around the world, including Xerox, ITT Industries, Providence Health System, and LexisNexis. Designed specifically to help professionals manage Six Sigma and quality improvement initiatives, the software provides guidance and tools that simplify every step of a project, from determining its scope to reporting on its success.
The Quality Companion Dashboard demonstrates the depth of Minitab’s commitment to meeting the needs of quality improvement professionals, says Cate Twohill, product marketing manager.
“Quality Companion is the ideal tool for managing individual Six Sigma projects,” she says. “But when a company has dozens or even hundreds of projects, leaders need a way to see what’s happening without opening every project file. We created the Dashboard to help stakeholders see, at a glance, how all of those projects are progressing.”
The Dashboard gathers and summarizes information from individual Quality Companion project files so that Master Black Belts, Champions, and stakeholders can immediately and easily find the status of each project, in a single view. By applying easy-to-use filters to the summary, leaders can answer questions such as:
Which projects are ahead of or behind schedule? How much money has the deployment saved? How are all of an individual’s projects doing? And much more.
“The Dashboard makes this very easy to do,” Twohill says. “No customization or additional data entry is necessary. You just open the application, point to where your Quality Companion project files are saved, and you’ll quickly see a summarized list with essential data from each project. Open a specific project from within the Dashboard for greater detail. It’s never been easier to manage quality improvement projects.”
The Quality Companion 2.4 update provides maximum interactivity with the Dashboard, though the Dashboard will summarize projects done in any release of Quality Companion 2. Other enhancements in Quality Companion 2.4 are listed at: http://www. minitab. com/products/qualitycompanion/whatsnew. aspx (http://www. minitab. com/products/qualitycompanion/whatsnew. aspx)
Quality Companion 2.4 supports every employee involved in a company’s Six Sigma program. Green Belts and Black Belts can use the Project Roadmap™ to plan their entire project. Master Black Belts can count on the Coach feature to give their team expert guidance on which tools to select and how to use them at every step. And Champions and other executives can rely on Quality Companion to help them standardize and evaluate projects and report on their successes.
“Quality Companion makes the Six Sigma process itself more efficient,” Twohill says. “Using the right tools makes it easier for professionals to complete their projects quickly and correctly, which ultimately results in more projects, greater savings, and higher profits.”
Quality Companion 2.4 also complements Minitab’s flagship product, Minitab® Statistical Software, which quality professionals worldwide use to perform the sophisticated statistical analyses at the heart of all their Six Sigma projects.
More information on Quality Companion 2.4, including an animated product tour, is available at www. qualitycompanion. com A free, 30-day trial version is also available online or by contacting Minitab at 1-800-448-3555.
The Quality Companion Dashboard and Viewer applications also are available for free download at www. qualitycompanion. com
About Minitab
Minitab Inc. (www. minitab. com) is one of the world’s leading developers of statistical analysis and process improvement software for academic and commercial users. Minitab Statistical Software is the preferred package for businesses of all sizes and is used in more than 80 countries by thousands of distinguished companies, including Toshiba, 3M, Honeywell International, Wachovia, DuPont, Haemonetics Corporation, Samsung and leading Six Sigma consultants. It has been used to implement virtually every major Six Sigma quality improvement initiative, and to teach statistics in over 4,000 colleges and universities worldwide.
Minitab Inc., headquartered in State College, Pa., operates offices in the United Kingdom, France, and Australia and has additional representatives throughout the world.
FOR MORE INFORMATION or materials, including screen shots, product packaging images and logos, and other graphics, contact Eston Martz in Minitab’s Marketing Department: PublicRelations @ minitab. com.
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