Neil's words remind me of what I read that Deming said one time when asked
if he would summarize his message to management:  Understand variability.

Quesenberry in "SPC Methods for Quality Improvement" says the real purpose
of SPC is "to establish when a process can reasonably be considered stable
or in control".

An unschooled but savvy mechanical engineer told me one time when we were
discussing SPC that "the best thing you can do for those machines is to
leave them alone".

Sorry I don't know of any plant-wide tools to use.  As I've suggested to
TechNet in the past, look into Quesenberry's Q-statistics for SPC if you
are starting from the beginning.

Lou Hart

-----Original Message-----
From:   Atkinson, Neil [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Friday, December 21, 2001 2:02 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: [TN] Favorite SPC tools

I would be careful with this one!

SPC works well and gives advantages when people get in touch with the data
and the process.  Software can sometimes become a means to "do SPC" and not
to control the process because it can make people feel detached from the
data and by doing too much of the work can result in a lack of
understanding
of variation, and if all a company gets out of an SPC programme is that
everyone understands variation, it has been worth the effort!

Neil


 -----Original Message-----
From:   Guy Ramsey [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   20 December 2001 21:45
Subject:        Favorite SPC tools

Is anyone out there using a plant wide SPC software tool?

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