New Textbook on Quality in the Office Features Quality Companion by Minitab®

A new textbook by noted Lean/Six Sigma authority James Martin aims to boost the successful application of quality improvement methods in the office.

In Lean Six Sigma for the Office, Martin presents proven modifications that can be deployed in offices, particularly those offices involved with global operations. Along the way, he shows how Quality Companion by Minitab® can make projects easier.

Quality Companion is software made specifically for managing and executing quality improvement projects. It complements the company’s flagship product, Minitab® Statistical Software, used by companies worldwide to analyze the data at the heart of every Six Sigma project.

Lean Six Sigma for the Office can help managers, consultants, and students in industrial engineering, business, and similar disciplines learn to improve operational efficiency and increase customer satisfaction.

“This book is designed to help students and quality professionals learn to walk into an office and start making improvements that generate rapid results,” Martin says.

Martin’s book is a practical, hands-on reference for quality improvement in the service sector, making use of Kaizen, Six Sigma and Lean manufacturing principles. “In my consulting work, I couldn’t find an existing text that offered clear guides for applying these principles in an office, especially in the critical early stages,” he explains.

Martin believes one challenge in applying these principles outside of manufacturing is making sure a project’s scope is appropriate. “Manufacturing projects may take weeks or months,” he says. “But it’s often possible to do office projects that have a huge impact in a matter of days.

Several months before starting the book, Martin discovered Quality Companion. It quickly became clear that Companion was an ideal tool for quality improvement projects.

“Quality Companion provides all the tools you need in one place,” he says. “It’s not necessary to use one application for flowcharts, another for fishbone diagrams, and another for organizing your team. Everything is right there, so you don’t need a lot of self-contained tools to handle different parts of your project."

Martin also found a great deal of value in Companion’s Roadmap™ feature. “Especially for people working on their first, second, or third projects, the Roadmap is great for giving you a clear sequence to follow to achieve your goals, and then providing the tools necessary to do each step.

“I also really like Quality Companion’s built-in presentation tool, which creates management presentations almost on-the-spot. As you use the tools to complete your project, you’re automatically creating your presentation at the same time, so you don’t need to create something new in PowerPoint. It’s really convenient and saves a lot of time.”

Quality Companion also includes the Dashboard, a utility that summarizes information across multiple projects to help evaluate overall progress. Managers can use it to review all of their team’s projects at once. Teachers who use Companion with their classes can use it to monitor the progress of student projects. The Dashboard is available as a free download, so even those who don’t use Companion can monitor the progress of their organization’s projects.