Management Articles
by William G. Hunter
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The Next 25 Years in Statistics
 
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(with contributions by Joseph W. Duncan, A. Blanton Godfrey, Brian L. Joiner, Gary C. McDonald, Charles G. Pfeifer, Donald W. Marquardt, and Ronald D. Snee). A transformation of the American style of management has already begun; in order for it to succee
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A Useful Method For Model-Building
 
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"The object of much experimentation is to build or discover a suitable model. This is done by an iterative procedure in which a particular model is tentatively entertained, strained in various ways over the region of applicat.ion, and its defects found. The nature of the defects interacting with the experimenter’s technical knowledge can suggest changes and remedies leading to a new model which, in turn, is tentatively entertained, and submitted to a similar straining process."
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A useful method for model-building II: Synthesizing response functions from individual components
 
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"There is a vast difference between quality control and quality improvement, passive statistical tools such as Shewhart control charts are useful for quality control, to determine whether the process under surveillance shows any signs of going out of its state of statistical control. On the other hand, more active tools are needed for quality and productivity improvement. In order to improve a process or a product, it is often helpful to use experimental designs in developing a mathematical equation or set of equations to relate the response(s) of interest to important process and environmental variables. Such models can aid in understanding how the relevant processes work so they can be modified in desirable ways. This report contains a practical suggestion that model-builders may find helpful. It involves synthesizing response functions of interest by starting with the simpler task of constructing models for component responses or subsets of them."