Methods & Guides
How to Use SimplicityHub's Lean Six Sigma Templates in Excel (Phase by Phase)
Use SimplicityHub's Excel templates to run DMAIC projects from Define to Control. Practical, phase-by-phase, and ready to download.
Use SimplicityHub's Excel templates to run DMAIC projects from Define to Control. Practical, phase-by-phase, and ready to download.
Most Lean Six Sigma projects stall not because the methodology is wrong, but because the paperwork gets in the way. People spend more time formatting spreadsheets than solving problems. The tools exist. The data exists. But the structure to hold it all together is missing.
That is exactly what the SimplicityHub template library is built to fix. Over 80 free templates, all downloadable as .xlsx workbooks, designed to slot directly into a standard Excel workflow without any specialist software, licences, or setup.
This guide walks you through the key project management templates and shows you exactly how to apply them at each phase of a DMAIC project. You do not need Minitab. You do not need a premium project tool. You need Excel and the right starting point.
.xlsx file with a completed worked example already inside.The single most common reason improvement projects run over time and over scope is that nobody agreed what the project actually was before the work started. Scope creep does not happen in the Improve phase. It happens in the first meeting, when the problem is described differently by every person in the room.
Two templates fix this before you write a single formula.
The Project Charter template is your first download. Open it in Excel and work through it section by section with your sponsor before anything else happens. It captures:
Problem statement — what is happening, where, and how often
Goal statement — the measurable target the project must hit
Scope — what is in and explicitly what is out
Team — names, roles, and time commitments
Timeline — phase-by-phase milestones
Risks — known threats to delivery, captured early
Do not treat this as a form to fill in and file. It is a working agreement. Every time someone tries to expand the scope mid-project, you return to this document and ask whether the change was agreed here.
Once the charter is signed off, open the SIPOC template in a second Excel tab. SIPOC stands for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, Customers. It maps the process at a high level, five columns, one page, the entire scope visible in a single view.
The purpose is alignment, not analysis. Before the team digs into data, they need to agree on what the process actually covers. SIPOC forces that conversation. Fill it in with the team, not alone at your desk.
Charter, SIPOC, then add further tabs as the project progresses. One workbook per project keeps everything in one place.The Measure phase is where most projects either gain momentum or quietly collapse. The problem is usually not a lack of data. It is unstructured data collected inconsistently by different people over different time periods. When you try to analyse it, the numbers do not tell you anything useful.
Structure the data collection before you collect a single data point.
Download the Sampling Plan template and complete it in Excel before anyone starts counting anything. It forces three decisions that most teams skip:
What exactly are you measuring? Define the defect, the unit, and the measurement method precisely enough that two different people would collect the same number.
How many data points do you need? The template guides you through sample size logic so you are not guessing.
How often and from where? Random sampling, stratified sampling, or consecutive samples — the method affects what conclusions you can draw.
Fill this in. Get it agreed. Then collect.
Once you have collected data, the Check Sheet template gives you a clean tally structure in Excel. It is straightforward: categories in rows, time periods or shifts in columns, counts in the cells. Simple, but it prevents the situation where half the team records defects one way and the other half records them differently.
Pair the Check Sheet with the Baseline Performance template. This captures your starting point before any changes are made. That number matters more than most teams realise. Without a documented baseline, you cannot prove the improvement at the end of the project. Sponsors ask for evidence. The baseline is your evidence.
Analysis is the phase where teams most often confuse activity with progress. Running Pareto charts and fishbone diagrams feels productive. But if those tools are not pointed at the right question, they produce interesting pictures and no actionable conclusions.
The templates in this phase are designed to keep the analysis focused on root cause, not surface pattern.
The Pareto principle holds that roughly 80% of the problem comes from 20% of the causes. The Pareto Chart template in Excel helps you find that 20%. Enter your defect categories and their frequencies, and the template calculates the cumulative percentage and builds the chart automatically.
The output tells you where to focus. Not all causes deserve equal attention. Pick the top one or two bars and direct your root cause analysis there.
The Fishbone template structures your brainstorming around six standard cause categories: Man, Machine, Method, Material, Measurement, and Environment. In Excel, this works best as a reference document alongside your data. The team uses it to generate hypotheses, then tests those hypotheses against the data rather than assuming the loudest voice in the room is right.
A common mistake: teams fill in the fishbone with everything they can think of, then treat the longest list as the answer. That is not root cause analysis. It is structured guessing. Use the fishbone to generate candidates, then validate with data.
For simpler problems, the 5 Whys template is often more practical than a full fishbone. It is a single Excel sheet: the problem statement at the top, five rows of Why/Answer below it. The discipline is in not stopping at the first plausible answer. Keep asking why until you reach a cause the team can actually control.
The root cause analysis guide covers this in more detail if you need a worked example before applying it to your own project.
Most improvement projects end at implementation. The team makes the change, the numbers improve, and then three months later the process has drifted back to where it started. The Control phase exists to prevent exactly that. But it only works if the documentation is in place before the team moves on.
Before implementing any change, download the Project Risk Assessment template. In Excel, this is a structured table: risk description, likelihood score, impact score, risk rating (likelihood x impact), mitigation action, and owner.
Do not skip this step because the solution feels obvious. The risks that sink improvement projects are rarely the ones the team saw coming. Completing this template forces the conversation about what could go wrong and who is responsible for preventing it.
Use the Project Status Report template throughout the Improve phase to keep stakeholders informed without spending hours writing updates. It is a one-page Excel summary: RAG status, milestones, issues, and next steps. Update it weekly. Share it before the steering meeting, not during it.
The Control Plan is the single most important document in the Control phase. It defines:
| Column | What to capture |
|---|---|
| Process step | Where in the process this control applies |
| CTQ characteristic | What quality characteristic you are monitoring |
| Specification | The acceptable range |
| Measurement method | How it is measured and by whom |
| Frequency | How often measurement happens |
| Reaction plan | What to do if the process goes out of control |
Fill this in before the project is closed. Without it, the improvement depends entirely on the memory of the people who ran the project. People change roles. Memory fades. The Control Plan is what remains.
The final step is the Project Closure Report template. This documents the before and after performance, the financial benefit where applicable, lessons learned, and any recommended follow-on work. It is the formal handover from project team to operational ownership.
It also creates an organisational record. The next person who faces a similar problem can learn from what you did rather than starting from scratch.
Here is the full sequence mapped to DMAIC phase, so you can see the workflow at a glance:
| DMAIC Phase | Template | Purpose in Excel |
|---|---|---|
| Define | Project Charter | Scope, goals, team, and timeline in one workbook tab |
| Define | SIPOC | High-level process map for team alignment |
| Define | RACI Matrix | Roles and responsibilities agreed before work begins |
| Measure | Sampling Plan | Data collection method agreed before collection starts |
| Measure | Check Sheet | Structured tally for consistent data recording |
| Measure | Baseline Performance | Starting point documented before any changes |
| Analyse | Pareto Chart | Frequency data ranked to find the vital few causes |
| Analyse | Fishbone Diagram | Hypothesis generation structured by cause category |
| Analyse | 5 Whys | Root cause drilling for simpler, contained problems |
| Improve | Project Risk Assessment | Risks identified and mitigated before implementation |
| Improve | Project Status Report | Weekly stakeholder updates in a single-page format |
| Control | Control Plan | Ongoing monitoring method and reaction plan documented |
| Control | Project Closure Report | Formal handover with before/after evidence |
Every one of these downloads as an .xlsx file with a completed worked example inside. The example shows you how the template should look when it is properly filled in, which matters more than most people expect. A blank grid tells you nothing. A completed example tells you the level of detail required and the format decisions that have already been made for you.
The practical advice that makes the biggest difference is the simplest one. Do not manage your project across twenty separate files. Create one Excel workbook at the start of the project and add a new tab for each template as you reach that phase.
Name the workbook clearly: [Project Name] DMAIC Workbook. Name each tab by phase and template: Define - Charter, Define - SIPOC, Measure - Sampling Plan, and so on. By the time you reach the Control phase, you have a single document that tells the full story of the project in the order it happened.
That workbook becomes the project record. It is what you share with your sponsor. It is what you hand over when the project closes. It is what you reference when someone asks, six months later, why the process works the way it does now.
The templates are the scaffolding. The workbook is the building.
If you are starting a new project, the free template library has everything covered here, plus the full set of 80+ tools for every phase of DMAIC and Lean work. Download what you need, work through the examples, and apply it directly to your project. No software to install. No annual licence. Just Excel and a structure that works.
For a deeper grounding in the DMAIC methodology itself, the how to run a DMAIC project guide walks through the full five-phase sequence with a real worked example alongside the templates.
Start with the Project Charter. It locks down the problem, goal, scope, team, timeline, and risks before anyone begins analysis. Once that is agreed, move straight to SIPOC so the team has a shared view of the process boundaries.
No. The templates are designed to work directly in Microsoft Excel. Each workbook includes a worked example, so you can see the structure, enter your data, and build the project record without extra licences or setup.
Use one workbook per project and add a new tab for each template as you move through DMAIC. Name the tabs by phase and document, such as Define - Charter or Measure - Sampling Plan, so the full project stays in one place.
The Control Plan is the most important control document because it defines what to monitor, how to measure it, how often to check it, and what to do if performance slips. Without it, improvements tend to drift back over time.
Yes. The same Excel templates work for lighter Lean projects because they give you structure without complexity. You can use the full DMAIC sequence for bigger work or pick the templates that match the level of detail your project needs.
80+ free templates with worked examples, ready to drop straight into your DMAIC project.