Minitab
Encyclopedia
Minitab is a statistics package. It was developed at the Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...

 by researchers Barbara F. Ryan, Thomas A. Ryan, Jr., and Brian L. Joiner in 1972. Minitab began as a light version of OMNITAB, a statistical analysis program by NIST
National Institute of Standards and Technology
The National Institute of Standards and Technology , known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards , is a measurement standards laboratory, otherwise known as a National Metrological Institute , which is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce...

.

Minitab is distributed by Minitab Inc, a privately owned company headquartered in State College, Pennsylvania
State College, Pennsylvania
State College is the largest borough in Centre County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is the principal city of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Centre County. As of the 2010 census, the borough population was 42,034, and roughly double...

, with subsidiaries in Coventry, England (Minitab Ltd.) Paris, France (Minitab SARL) and Sydney, Australia (Minitab Pty.).

Today, Minitab is often used in conjunction with the implementation of Six Sigma
Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a business management strategy originally developed by Motorola, USA in 1986. , it is widely used in many sectors of industry.Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing and...

, CMMI and other statistics-based process improvement methods.

Minitab 16, the latest version of the software, is available in 7 languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, & Spanish.

Minitab Inc. produces two other products that complement Minitab 16. Quality Trainer; an eLearning package that teaches statistical tools and concepts in the context of quality improvement that integrates with Minitab 16 to simultaneously develop the user's statistical knowledge and ability to use the Minitab software; and Quality Companion 3, an integrated tool for managing Six Sigma
Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a business management strategy originally developed by Motorola, USA in 1986. , it is widely used in many sectors of industry.Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing and...

 and Lean Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing
Lean manufacturing, lean enterprise, or lean production, often simply, "Lean," is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination...

 projects that allows Minitab data to be combined with project management
Project management
Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end , undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value...

and governance tools and documents.

Uses of Minitab:
  • Data and File Management- spreadsheet for better data analysis.
  • Regression Analysis
  • Power and Sample Size
  • Tables and Graphs
  • Multivariate Analysis- includes factor analysis, cluster analysis, correspondence analysis, etc.
  • Nonparametrics- various tests including sing test, runs test, friedman test, etc.
  • Time Series and Forecasting- tools that help show trends in data as well as predicting future values. Time series plots, exponential smoothing, trend analysis.
  • Statistical Process Control
  • Measurement System Analysis
  • Analysis of Variance- to determine the difference between data points.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK