Quality Management : Statistical Process Control (SPC)
Expert Answers: May 2009
Design deviation ... Choosing your chart ... Studying sigma shift...
Volviendo a los Fundamentos: Remover Obstáculos en el CEP (SPC)
El Control Estadístico de Procesos (CEP) ha aportado un importante ahorro de costos para las empresas que afortunadamente lo implementaron plenamente....
Bright Idea
There is an opportunity to apply statistical process control where it can have an impact on our daily lives by providing warning signs of pending outages, signal waste and process problems in the world’s largest machine: the North American power system....
Use SPC for Everyday Work Processes
Despite the advantages of statistical process control (SPC), many organizational implementation efforts have not been successful or self-sustaining. This has nothing to do with the methodology, but is a case of using the right toolbox but the wrong...
Stoplight Charts (With SPC Inside)
Many balanced scorecards use stoplight charts to track defects. Colors for the chart are set by comparing current results with target thresholds. Software that automates the process results in an operation that is quick and efficient, but which may be...
The Right Place At the Right Time
My first exposure to quality came as a U.S. Navy submarine officer. As it holds a nuclear reactor and submerges under a lot of seawater pressure, a submarine has many quality issues....
SPC: From Chaos to Wiping the Floor
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....
Column: Standards Outlook: ISO 9001:2000's Process Approach
A new concept or the same old stuff?
Questions and answers on the process approach of ISO...
Column: Statistics Roundtable: Variation in SPC
The ultimate goal of univariate SPC is to eliminate all sources of special cause variation in a process. Unfortunately, special cause variation is often process inherent and in many cases not removable by simple adjustments. One way to handle the...
Column: Statistics Roundtable: My Process Is Too Variable--Now What Do I Do?
How to produce and use a successful multi- vari study by Ronald D. Snee Process Schematic FIGURE 1 The process Process outputs Controlled variables Customer Process inputs Uncontrolled noise variables Manufacturing Process Variables TABLE 1 Process input...
Column: Emerging Sectors: Cleaning Up With SPC
Statistical process control is playing a role in a huge environmental project at a nuclear weapon production site
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Nuclear Site played a pivotal role in the nation's defense beginning in the 1940s when it was created as part of the Manhattan Project. The current environmental clean-up...
Column: Statistics Roundtable: Chicken Soup for Processes
Understanding process variation is a prerequisite to using SPC
SPC can help hold onto gains once they are attained by being used for Shewhart's originally intended purpose -- to detect the entry of assignable cause variation....
What Would Deming Say?
In this instance when the observers ask why the employees do not use the identified pro- quality behavior, they respond: " It cuts down on my productivity to go down to the order desk," or " If I phone from there, repeating the order is almost more troub...
Understanding the Hierarchy of Process Control
Managers often want to implement process control, but may be confused about what constitutes a state of process control, how they want their manufacturing systems to operate, and what the current state of the operating system may be. The current...
Semiconductor Assembly Council Promotes Use of Quality Tools
The member companies of the Semiconductor Assembly Council represent manufacturers, assembly and test subcontractors, and end user companies. SAC was established to certify subcontractor quality and process control systems. The member firms represent...
Statistics Roundtable: Why Multivariate SPC?
Recent technological advances in industrial control procedures have greatly improved the quality of production in modern industry. For example, multivariable controllers and feedback loops provide tighter control of a process by restricting the...
The Box-Jenkins Bounded Manual Adjustment Chart
A Graphical Tool Designed for Use on the Production Floor
The Box-Jenkins manual adjustment chart is a graphical methodology to be employed on the production floor....
The Control Chart Dilemma
Group target X bar and group range charts are control charts appropriate for statistical process control (SPC) in today's complex manufacturing environment. These charts overcome three shortcomings of traditional SPC methods. These limitations are:...
Helping the Learning Disabled Participate in Quality Programs
Employee training is ever more important in an era of worker shortages and technological change. This is especially true for employees with learning disabilities (LDs). Even though an LD may affect one's ability to process information, persons with...
In this month’s QP, A.V. Feigenbaum outlines five areas quality professionals must focus on to help their companies succeed as the economy recovers. The article is based on remarks he presented at ASQ’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement in May 2009. For a preview of this article, listen to an interview with Feigenbaum from earlier this year and see his conference presentation. You can also check out his past QP articles.
65th Annual Deming Conference of Applied Statistics
December 7–11 | Atlantic City, NJ
Call Walter Young at 610-989-1622 or e-mail demingchair@gmail.com.
Lean and Six Sigma in Product Development Conference
December 8–10 | Miami, FL
Call Worldwide Conventions and Business Forums at 800-959-6549 or visit www.wcbf.com/quality/5101.
ASQ members exchange comments, suggestions, questions and ideas inspired by articles or letters in Quality Progress.
