Statistical Quality Control

Quality: A Brief Introduction

The main objective of statistical quality control (SQC) is to achieve quality in production and service organizations, through the use of adequate statistical techniques. The following survey relates to manufacturing rather than to the service industry, but the principles of SQC can be successfully applied to either. For an example of how SQC applies to a service environment, see Roberts (2005). Quality of a product can be defined as its adequacy to be used (Montgomery 2009), which is evaluated by the so-called quality characteristics. Those are random variables in a probability language, and are usually classified as: physical, like length and weight; sensorial, like flavor and color; temporally oriented, like the maintenance of a system.

Quality Control(QC) has been an activity of engineers and managers, who have felt the need to work jointly with statisticians. Different quality characteristics are measured and compared with pre-determined...