Building my own improvement toolbox

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been building DMAIC Companion, an app for working through improvement projects and root cause analysis.

I wanted a tool that explained the method as I worked: why each step matters, what a useful example looks like, and which mistakes to watch for.

What began as an Apollo RCA guide gradually grew into a broader toolbox, bringing several improvement tools into one place.

The app lets me work through a full DMAIC project, investigate a problem, or use an individual tool such as a Fishbone diagram or Pareto chart. Guidance and examples sit alongside the work, and projects can be exported to PowerPoint. Data stays locally, without an account.

I’m building it with Claude Code. I’m not a programmer, so much of the work involves describing what I want, testing the result, and figuring out what needs to change. That process has become a learning project of its own.

Right now, I’m testing the app from start to finish. Once it’s ready for a few other people to try, I’m curious to see where they find it useful—and where they get stuck.

I’ll share more as the project develops.