Fundamentals of Statistical Process Control

For over fifty years W. Edwards Deming has been trying to improve the productivity of this country. Until recently, he has been ignored. Now as more managers become aware of his role in the "Japanese miracle," there is widespread interest in his approach. According to Deming, the way to improve productivity is to improve quality by using statistical process control (SPC) techniques. SPC involves using statistical analyses to monitor process performance with the goal of preventing quality problems, rather than detecting them after the fact. The purpose of this paper is to provide a general overview of SPC.