Members Log In to My ASQ    View Shopping Cart    Quality Progress Magazine Make Good Great
ASQ Store
Books &
Standards

Articles

Subscriptions
Training &
Certification

Conferences

ASQ Gear
Articles

QICID: 19142

Title: SPC: From Chaos to Wiping the Floor

Copyright: 2003, ASQ
Author: Hare, Lynne B.
Organization: Kraft Foods Research, East Hanover, NJ
Subject: Biographies,Control charts,History,Variation,Shewhart, Walter A.,Statistical process control (SPC),Process control;
Series: Quality Progress, Vol. 36, No. 7, July 2003, pp. 58-63

This ARTICLE is available FREE to all readers.


Abstract: Physicist Walter Shewhart, in tackling the problem of process control, began with the definition of control and went on to distinguish chance causes from assignable causes of variation. He believed that assignable causes could be found and eliminated. The first published control chart was an internal Bell Telephone Laboratories report in 1924. Shewhart, also an empiricist, based his control chart limits on the economics of change rather than on underlying probabilities. His run charts were drawn with limits based on marked improvements from previous periods of inspection. Statistical process control, which originally referred only to the application of control charts, now refers to the application of statistical tools to the improvement of quality and productivity, with control charts as one of the preeminent tools.

Browse QIC articles chronologically        previous    next

New Search