MIS and SPC: A Match Made in Heaven

Statistical process control began in the early 1920s, lead by Walter Shewhart, an American engineer and physicist. During World War II, the well-known Edward Deming helped improve the quality and output of strategically important products for the U.S. war effort using statistical process control. It is commonly known that statistical process control, or SPC, can be a valuable approach to increasing manufacturing output, decreasing waste, and increasing product quality. But it can also be used to manage other nonmanufacturing processes - processes that still have an output, but not necessarily a product. These processes include converting quotes to orders, converting shipped products to billable invoices, or meeting on-time delivery goals. The modern management information system (MIS) automatically collects the information necessary to objectively measure converting and business processes for increased throughput, decreased waste, and increased quality. The information is there, but sometimes the tools, knowledge or drive to get at the information is not.
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