User Manual

Projects & DMAIC Tools

Improvement projects are where your Lean Six Sigma work lives. Create a project, run the DMAIC toolkit against its own data, and let Kanso track the work from kickoff to closeout.

Create an improvement project

Every improvement effort in Kanso starts as a project. A project is the container that holds the problem you are solving, the people working on it, and every Lean Six Sigma tool you run along the way. Because the tools attach to the project, each analysis stays grounded in that project's own data rather than in a scratchpad somewhere else.

  1. Open Projects

    Go to the Projects area and choose to create a new improvement project.
  2. Describe the problem

    Give the project a name and capture the problem you intend to improve so the whole team shares the same starting point.
  3. Open the Toolkit

    Once the project exists, open its per-project Toolkit view to begin running the DMAIC tools against the project.

Run the DMAIC toolkit

The Toolkit view collects the Lean Six Sigma tools you need for the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control phases. Each tool opens inside the project and works with the project's data, so the charter, measurements, and analyses all describe the same effort.

  • Define — project charter, SIPOC, and CTQ to frame scope and customer requirements.
  • Measure — MSA / Gage R&R to confirm your measurement system is trustworthy.
  • Analyze — hypothesis testing and SPC to find and confirm the sources of variation.
  • Improve — DOE and FMEA to design changes and guard against failure modes.
  • Control — the control plan to hold the gains after the project closes.

◳ Screenshot

The per-project Toolkit view, with each DMAIC tool grounded in the project's own data.

Let the advisor suggest the next tool

You do not have to memorise the DMAIC sequence. A Kanso advisor sits alongside the toolkit and suggests the next tool to run based on where the project is. It is a prompt, not a gate: you are always free to open any tool directly when your situation calls for it.

Tip:Treat the advisor's suggestion as a starting point. If your project needs a control plan before you finish analysis, open it anyway — the tools do not lock you into a fixed order.

Track progress from the Overview cockpit

The project Overview is a cockpit for the whole effort. It shows project health, milestones that roll up from the underlying tasks, and a status that updates automatically as task progress changes — so the Overview reflects real work rather than a manually kept label.

Manage the work as tasks

Projects support tasks with subtasks, dependencies, assignees, dates, and comments, so the day-to-day execution and the DMAIC analysis live in the same place. As those tasks advance, the milestones and status on the Overview move with them.

Close the project with an executive summary

When the work is done and you close the project, Kanso can generate an executive summary of the effort. That gives you a shareable record of what the project set out to do and where it landed, without writing the closeout report from scratch.