Single-variable SPC evolves into Multi-variable GPC

Statistical Process Control (SPC) was invented by Walter Shewart of Bell Telephone Laboratories, USA in 1924 and widely promoted by W. Edwards Deming in the 1940’s for product Quality Control in manufacturing industries. Deming found little traction for his promotion of SPC in the USA so he went to Japan in the early 1950’s where SPC was quickly appreciated as an essential method in rebuilding the Japanese Manufacturing Industry after its destruction during WWII. Returning to the USA around 1960, word of Japan’s success with SPC preceded him and he found a much more receptive Industry eagerly awaiting SPC which was quickly established as the leading quality control technique.

But the fundamental limitation of SPC is due to its being based on single-variable statistics which led to it being used where variables were truly independent of each other. This was a condition more likely to be true in applications in manufacturing plants than in process plants where almost every variable has some degree of interaction with several other variables. Numerous attempts have been and are still being made to extend statistics into multi-variable applications but so far with limited success,

SPC introduced concepts of ‘Capability’, ‘Control Limits’, ‘Common Cause and Special Cause’ events and these we have carried over into Geometric Process Control (GPC) which broke with Statistics and instead is based on a little-used main branch of mathematics known as multi-dimensional or multi-variable geometry made visible in two dimensions using the Parallel Coordinate transformation which enables its use for applications with hundreds or even thousands of variables, many of which exist in large and small process plants.

Users of our CVE product have been using GPC for several years under different application names all effectively searching for ways to reduce Operational Variability so increasingly Site and Group Quality Control Departments are starting to realise that GPC can be used for Site-wide and even Group-wide applications that they couldn’t consider in the past.

So, whatever industry you are in, enrol for one of the webinar sessions below and come and see and discuss GPC and judge for yourselves our success in capturing and carrying forward the principles of SPC that Deming espoused into the future.

This webinar will be of interest to those working in industries where consistent product quality and minimal variability from lot to lot is essential for maintaining their reputation and market-share. This partial list includes
• Food and Drink
• Speciality Chemicals especially when products are to be used as additives or reagent feeds by their customers
• Pharmaceuticals including API manufacture
• Flavours and Fragrances

• Existing users of SPC looking to gain technology leadership and market share from their rivals.
• All Site, multi-site and Global Product Quality Managers