In 1931, Walter Shewhart published his landmark book Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product. He asserted that his theory and methods were an innovation to the science of management and wrote: “We are sold on the idea of applying scientific principles. However, a change is coming about in the principles themselves, and this change gives us a new concept of control.” Shewhart’s ideas were widely applied during WW2 and The American Society for Quality Control was founded in 1946 to sustain these quality improvement techniques used by industry during wartime.

W. Edwards Deming supported Shewhart’s idea of a change in scientific principles in a foreword he wrote for the 1986 republishing of Shewhart’s Statistical Method From the Viewpoint of Quality Control: “Another half-century may pass before the full spectrum of Dr. Shewhart’s contributions has been revealed in liberal education, science and industry.”

So what is happening with Deming’s prediction for 2034? Big data analytics, data-driven decision making, business intelligence and transparency in public data have created new opportunities for an understanding of variation to guide decision making. This session will discuss the current use of Shewhart’s theories and methods including recent applications to the Covid-10 Pandemic.

Presenter: Lloyd P. Provost

Lloyd Provost is an improvement advisor with Associates in Process Improvement (https://apiweb.org/) who has applied the science of improvement worldwide. His experience includes consulting and teaching in collaborative improvement, planning, management systems, measurement, planned experimentation, and statistical process control. Lloyd is a senior fellow of the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and works with IHI on their “Improvement Advisor Development Program”. Lloyd holds has a Bachelor of Science in Statistics from the University of Tennessee and a Master of Science in Statistics from the University of Florida. He is the author of multiple papers relating to quality and measurement and co-author of three books on planned experimentation, measurement, and the science of improvement.