(Minitab: State College, PA) -- Because improving quality and boosting efficiency can literally save lives, all of the U.S. Armed Forces have adopted lean Six Sigma to improve processes and reduce waste.

Lean Six Sigma relies on the ability to analyze data, but most people tasked with quality improvement—whether in the military or not—are not trained statisticians. For those who feel that a dataset is like a battlefield, a new feature in Minitab 16 Statistical Software makes exploring and analyzing data easier than ever.

Minitab’s latest release includes the Assistant, a menu-based tool designed to guide even novice users through their analyses and help them interpret their results with confidence. The Assistant menu (see figure 1) makes hypothesis tests, control charts, capability analysis, measurement systems analysis, and regression accessible to everyone.

Figure 1: The Assistant menu

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