ABSTRACT
I would be happy to report that the SPC chart, or Shewhart chart, was readily adopted throughout the USA and UK, thus helping these countries to dominate world trade. However, that would not be true. Shewhart charts were used in the USA and the UK during the 1930s and during the Second World War, but were then largely abandoned. Later it emerged that Japanese industry picked up what we had discarded and used control charts to such good effect that we are now reintroducing Shewhart's techniques in the hope of regaining lost ground.
