Minitab’s Analytics Solutions design manager, Bass Masri, explores the company’s analytics solutions that ensure businesses produce high-quality products and services.
Software solutions provider, Minitab, has been helping companies to improve product quality with its analytics solutions for more than 50 years. Its integrated platform combines analytics software, process improvement methodologies, and training initiatives to help organisations achieve quality outcomes.
“Minitab is the leader in quality improvement software. This reputation is reflected in an extensive range of quality-specific tools and features that are needed in real world quality processes,” said Analytics Solutions design manager, Minitab, Bass Masri.
“Minitab’s strength lies in its ability to provide robust, user-friendly, and comprehensive solutions for organisations that are seeking to improve quality and drive process excellence.”
In his new role, Masri is involved in the design and implementation of these solutions. As someone that loves simple past times like going to the beach, Masri drew a comparison between his own work and that of a surf life saver.
“My major goal at Minitab is to help businesses to stay safe managing data, learn to swim in turbulent economies and ride the analytics wave successfully,” he said.
With a background in engineering, mathematics and statistics, Masri believes Minitab’s solutions, which prioritise quality in products, processes and services, are essential for manufacturers to thrive in today’s competitive landscape. This portfolio of solutions targets different aspects of quality assurance, such as deciding quality, verifying accurate measurement, and quantifying how well they are meeting goals.
“It leads to happier customers, reduced costs, a stronger brand, and a culture of continuous improvement,” said Masri.
He said prioritising quality within manufacturing is a vital consideration because it results in minimising defects, improving reliability, and decreasing warranty returns. Additionally, he said that product quality supports the meeting of regulations and innovative processes.
“Robust product quality ensures adherence to quality management system regulations and compliance to rigorous product safety standards,” he said. “A commitment to quality advances innovation by providing a data-driven platform for problem-solving and process enhancement.”
Masri said that by delivering high-quality products, a business’s reputation is solidified by fostering customer loyalty and cultivating brand awareness.
“Delivering high-quality products and services is crucial for meeting customer expectations, building trust, and developing a sustainable competitive edge,” he said.
A comprehensive quality-assurance offering
Due to the importance of delivering high-quality products and services, Minitab utilises core statistical methodologies in its suite of improvement solutions that are broad reaching and easy to interact with.
“Minitab provides a big suite of quality tools, covering areas like Statistical Process Control (SPC), Measurement System Analysis (MSA), Design of Experiments (DOE), and reliability analysis,” he said.
The company’s continuous improvement platforms integrate idea generation, workflow and project planning, approvals and management, through a multifaceted dashboard.
“Dashboards, project tracking, and measurement are combined with a suite of standardised problem-solving methodologies, techniques, and tools,” said Masri.
Minitab also goes the extra mile with its educational training programs and tutorials that help users maximise benefits.
These offerings are part of Minitab’s mission to ensure the reliability of vital systems in an age where everyone is dependent on technology and adversely affected if a product or component they depend on fails.
Assembling a suit of quality-inducing solutions
At the core of Minitab’s continuous improvement offerings is its Quality Analytics Solutions, which is modelled on a strict analysis framework to ensure consistency and viability. This framework helps simplify what is an all-encompassing analytics solution that uses mathematics, statistics, graphics, predictive modelling and machine learning techniques to find patterns and knowledge.
“Analytics can be descriptive [what happened], diagnostic [why it happened], predictive [what might happen next] and prescriptive [what is the best course of action to take],” said Masri
One offering that adheres to this framework is the company’s Statistical Process Control (SPC) solution that ensures production processes remain stable, consistent, and predictable. Despite the inevitability of variation, SPC control charts can demonstrate whether a process is stable and consistent, assess the effectiveness of a process improvement change and communicate the performance of a process.
“Assessing process stability enables businesses to discover and correct variation that reduces quality,” said Masri.
“A control chart turns time-ordered data for a particular characteristic – such as product volume or the time it takes to complete a transaction – into a picture that is easy to understand and warns you when shifts in a process occur.”
Adapting to a data-driven industry
As more data continues to be collected from processes, Minitab prides itself in implementing tools that utilise new technologies alongside traditional statistical tools. This has led the company to evolve from classical regression methods to the Predictive Analytics Module used today that utilises modern machine learning techniques.
“While traditional regression techniques offer valuable insights, they often rely on parametric assumptions and can struggle with complex, non-linear data,” said Masri.
An example of this evolution within Minitab’s continuous improvement offerings is its Classification and Regression Tree (CART) model and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) solution that help identify root causes of issues.
“An example that may start with binary logistic regression for a response that is pass or fail, good or bad or conforming or non-conforming, and ends with the Predictive Analytics Module and a robust nonparametric CART model,” said Masri.
Because gathering this data is vital to predictive analytics, the company also scrutinises products, processes and service statistics to ensure accuracy. It does this through Power, Sample Size and Sampling Plans, which help estimate the required sample size to perform an analysis.
“Sampling can bolster confidence that the information you provide to customers is data-driven, accurate, and precise,” said Masri.
Painting a practical picture
Minitab’s continuous improvement software was seen in action within the operations of global crayon manufacturer, Crayola. Manufacturing for more than 100 years, the company has become a leader in the manufacture of crayons. What is often hidden, however, are the measures undertaken to ensure that the 2.2 billion crayons they make every year meet the highest standards.
To uphold these standards and enhance the quality of their crayons, the company relies on Minitab’s Statistical Software to analyse data and continuously pursue improvements.
“We start with the assumption that everything we do, we can do better,” explained vice president of Manufacturing, Crayola, Gary Wapinski. “And that’s why Minitab is key – it helps us understand statistical analysis and lets the data reveal where we need to go.”
Going forward
Looking forward, Minitab’s product development pipeline will continue to focus on new ways to manage work. One of these developments is the recent acquisition of simulation software Simul8. This new solution helps simulate the operations of a system – such as a day-to-day manufacturing production line.
“By using a virtual simulation to test the impact of process changes and test ‘what-if’ scenarios, you can find an approach that delivers the best results,” said Masri.
Minitab continues to bring its data-driven solutions and predictive analytics to help manufacturers worldwide in improving product and service quality.