ABSTRACT
In our daily life, we often talk about the quality of a product. The product can be
small items, such as the clothes, shoes, watches, food, and so forth, that we could
not live without. It can also be larger items, such as bikes, cars, televisions, and so
forth, that our families routinely use. It can even be the network systems that manage
our communities or even the entire society, such as the banking system, health care
system, internet system, and so forth. In cases when the quality of any of these prod-
ucts has a problem, our life could become miserable. Besides the products mentioned
above that affect everyone’s life, we are actually concerned about the quality of any
products that we produce, although some of them may not affect everyone’s life, or
they may not affect some people’s lives directly (e.g., certain satellites, luxury prod-
ucts). This raises an important question. How can we control or assure the quality
of products? To answer the question, many management philosophies and statistical
methodologies have been developed in the literature. A central part of these method-
ologies is the so-called statistical process control (SPC). This book describes some
fundamental SPC methodologies.
