The idea of monitoring manufacturing processes using statistical methods goes back to the 1920s when Walter A. Shewhart, an American physicist, engineer and statistician, was engaged by the Western Electric Company in Chicago to find a way to produce their products with a certain quality level. He understood that the quality of a final product depends on the deviation of all parameters involved in the production and that it is necessary to monitor the critical parameters during production. This made it possible to understand which deviations were just random, being in the normal behavior of the process, and which were caused by systematical effects like misaligned machines, failures in material, operator failure, etc.

Download the PDF of this article, or read it in the electronic edition of Global SMT & Packaging 8.10 - October 2008.

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