Introduction to Statistical Quality Control

If you want to take your knowledge of statistics and see how it is applied in the arena of Statistical Process Control (SPC) this book is a great place to start. A prior background in statistics will be very helpful in understanding the underlying concepts. A more basic introduction to some of the underlying distributions discussed may help the concepts make more sense. Overall, the text seems quite comprehensive in its coverage of SPC. It should give a newcomer to the field a firm foundation for further exploration.

Doug Montgomery is an excellent instructor and author. I have taken short courses from him. He teaches statistics in the Engineering School at Arizona State. He is known for his books on engineering statistics and has written some excellent texts on design of experiments, response surface methodology, linear regression and quality control. He is well acquainted with the Deming philosophy for quality , Taguchi designs and the six sigma concept. This book on statistical quality control introduces control chart methods and all the other tools of statistical quality control with the expertise that few have. The book is very accessible to statisticians engineers and others with good mathematical backgrounds but not necessarily strong trtaining in statistics. A virtue of Montgomery in all the books he has authored or coauthored is the clarity of presentation and the ability to reach a wide audience of non-statisticians.

If you are looking to be well versed on the principle of Statistical Quality Control, then you need this book.

Used this book in a graduate level course on SPC. The book and the excercises were interesting and highly informative, as are all of Dr. Montgomery's numerous texts. Most concepts are backed up with liberal examples to help understand the theory and cement the concept and their practical applications, and run the whole gamut from management to electrical engineering problems. Many of the tables in the back of the book, such as the random number table, are outdated due to computers, however these may have been dropped in the new version of the text.

As the developer of the QI Macros SPC Software for Excel, customers often call with exotic questions about statistical methods for quality control. Montgomery's book, more often than not, is the one I turn to for answers that I can't seem to find anywhere else. Even if I do find the answer in another book, it's always easier to understand in Montgomery's. The book is written in a way that makes seemingly incomprehensible statistics understandable. And there are plenty of examples.If you're looking for a book to help you implement quality control in a small business, Montgomery's book is a bit too much, so you might consider my book on the Small Business Guerrilla Guide to Six Sigma or Six Sigma Simplified.