When you use menu commands in Minitab, Minitab retains session commands for recording operations. You can use these session commands to quickly re perform analysis on a new set of data.

Each menu command corresponds to a session command. A session command consists of a main command and (usually) one or more sub commands. The main command and subcommands can be followed by a series of parameters, which can be columns, constants, matrices, text strings, or numbers. Minitab provides three methods for using session commands:

· Enter session commands in the command line pane.

· Copy session commands from the history pane to the command line pane.

· Copy the session command and save it to an exec file.

When viewing the command line/history pane and then executing a command from the menu, the corresponding session command will be displayed in the history pane. This technique makes it easy to understand session commands.

When new data becomes available, the Western Shipping Center can continuously collect and analyze delivery times. In the evaluation quality section on page 28, you conducted a capability analysis on the data for March. In this chapter, you can use session commands to perform capability analysis on the data for April.

Perform analysis using session commands

One way to use session commands is to enter these commands in the command line pane. Minitab does not display this pane by default, so you must enable it.

View Command Line Panes

1. If continuing from the previous chapter, please select File>New>Project. If not continuing from the previous chapter, please start Minitab.

2. Open sample data session command MTW.

3. Select View>Command Line/History.

Image 1: Command line

In the previous quality evaluation, you conducted a capability analysis to determine if the delivery time is within the specified specifications (within 6 delivery days). To perform this analysis, you used Statistics>Quality Tools>Capability Analysis>Normality. Then, you entered the data column, subgroup column, and specification upper limit.

To continue evaluating the delivery time of the Western Shipping Center, you plan to repeat this analysis regularly. After collecting new data, you can use some session commands to repeat this analysis.

1. In the command line pane, enter Capability 'Days' and' Date ';

A semicolon indicates that you want to enter a subcommand.

2. Press the Enter key.

3. Enter USPEC 6

A period indicates the end of the command sequence.

4. Click on Run.

The content of the command line pane was not cleared after the command was completed. Select Clear All in the upper right corner to clear the content of that pane.

Image 2: Process Capability Report

Tip: To open a PDF file that lists session commands in Minitab, enter Help at the command prompt.