One of the big problems facing many new Six Sigma Green Belts and Six Sigma Black Belts is staying organized when dealing with the complexity of their projects. Experienced Six Sigma Belts face a different problem: when several projects are in work simultaneously keeping track of everything can quickly become unmanageable. Minitab’s Quality Companion 3 (QC3) software, and its associated Quality Companion Dashboard, provide an excellent way of dealing with these issues.

Unlike Minitab, QC3 provides a relatively sparse toolset for performing statistical analysis. That’s not the point of QC3. Instead, the tools included within QC3 are intended to be used for helping organize data, reports, and forms within the project. Examples: project charter forms, value stream maps, flowcharts, C&E diagrams, C&E matrices, Gantt charts, etc.. Dozens of forms are included, and you can add your own custom forms. Other reasons to give Quality Companion a try:

  • Cross-populate forms with redundant data. (Xs and Ys show up in several places.)
  • Calculates simple statistics, such as takt time.
  • Make simple presentations.
  • Allows creation of custom templates.
  • Keep project data in a single place.
  • Basic scheduling tools (Gantt, Milestone.)
  • Track portfolios of projects. Not sure it can handle an enterprise, but perfectly serviceable for a Belt or a MBB managing several Belts.
  • Free trial. Free webinars. Several licensing options.
  • Integrates with Minitab. Allows importing from and exporting to Visio, Excel, PowerPoint, and other commonly used software.

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