Minitab is a statistics package developed at the Pennsylvania State University 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; the documentation for OMNITAB was published 1986, and there has been no significant development since then.2Minitab is distributed by Minitab Inc, a privately owned company headquartered in State College, Pennsylvania.Today, Minitab is often used in conjunction with the implementation of six sigma, CMMI and other statistics-based process improvement methods.