ISBIS4 Abstract

Contact Author's Name: Barbara Ryan
Title of Abstract: Designing Software for the Six Sigma Market
Author(s): Barbara Ryan
Affiliation: Minitab, Inc.

For the first 20 years of its history, Minitab was a general purpose statistics package, used by university students and statisticians in industry. Now we serve the quality market, with an emphasis on Six Sigma. The needs of this market, for statistics and for software, are very different from our traditional markets.

Six Sigma practitioners usually have very little background in statistics, especially those in service companies. The training they are given, usually four one week sessions, is very intensive. It covers six sigma methodology, statistics, Minitab, and includes a project. When they finish, their knowledge of the methods is not very strong. Nor do they have a lot of time to improve their skills since they have their usual work to do. Their needs are very different from the needs of our traditional users.

Currently, Minitab is doing a major redesign of its main product to meet the needs of six sigma practitioners. We are also looking at developing other products that might help them.