Statistics-Aided Manufacturing: A Look into the Future – 1988 Youden Address

Abstract: Statisticians are faced with many challenges in this new quality improvement environment. The non-technical challenges are of paramount importance and they include prioritizing work, concentrating on activities with the highest payoff, being team players and proactive, defining problems, and being good communicators. There are significant technical challenges as well, but we should not limit our attention to these. Furthermore, the new computer-intensive environment provides many opportunities. As we move further from a data-poor to a data-rich environment, we will become more and more absorbed by the challenges of compressing data to gain information and of anticipating and correcting problems before they occur. We should also focus on product life and in-service reliability which are important quality performance characteristics.

Keywords: Autocorrelation - Automatic process control - Common cause - Control charts - Special cause - Statistical process control - Reliability assurance - Youden Address