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Last month, we saw Anna Nutherthing, quality assurance manager for Melt & Mold Industries, as she tried to enhance her career opportunities by teaching SPC to her entire staff. One of these, Jan U. Wari, insisted that the best way to make good products would be to adjust machines so all data points would fall between the control limits. Her rule: if a point falls above the X-bar, adjust the operation of the machine downward to compensate for the distance between the data point and the X-bar. If a data point appeared below the X-bar, on the other hand, she would adjust the operation upwards to compensate. “It’s important to assure that all data points fall between the control limits,” she said. “After all, that’s what they’re there for.”
How does this approach conform to established practices of SPC, and to the management theories of W. Edwards Deming?
a) Yikes. A disaster in the making.
b) We can almost hear Dr. Deming applauding.
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