SPC in the Office
By Mal Owen and John Morgan

Review 1
Reviewed by David Straker
David Straker is a program manager with Agilent Technolgies (formerly Hewlett-Packard’s non-computer business). He is the author of five books on business and quality, including ‘A Toolbook for Problem Solving and Quality Improvement’ and ‘The Quality Conspiracy’.

SPC in the office is a sadly rare thing these days, but there is no longer any excuse not to use this powerful set of tools for this, less mechanical, side of business. Mal Owen and John Morgan have written SPC in the Office to directly address the glaring gap in the literature on this important subject.

The coverage in the book is, predictably, of the main SPC toolset, including assorted charts, capability analysis and flowcharts. The control chart, perhaps the most potent and often difficult tool, receives the lion’s share of the text, with nine chapters dedicated to explaining and illustrating every detail of its use. There is briefer, but useful coverage of several other tools, such as brainstorming, XY grids and affinity diagrams.

In addition to tool descriptions, other chapters cover related topics such as variation, process understanding and measurement. There is even a chapter on the non-trivial subject of introducing SPC into organisations.

Many diagrams and charts are used throughout the book to illustrate every detail of using the tools described, making it a delight to read and use.

What really sets this book apart is the plentiful real-life case studies which not only demonstrate that these are serious tools that can be used in the office, but also highlight the depths of practical experience of the authors.

All authors need to draw a boundary around what they will and will not cover, and this book does not cover variants such as short-run charts, cusum charts and design of experiments.

Perhaps this is wise, as there is more than enough to be getting on with in implementing the tools here. When these have resulted in the predictable massive improvements in your office (and to your bottom line), then you may wish to delve into more advanced texts for the next level of statistical detail.

Overall, Mr Owen and Mr Morgan have created a real practitioner’s book, a serious how-to that, if taken seriously, will repay its cost a thousand times over.

Review2
Professor John Bessant CENTRIM
University of Brighton

The innovation challenge is inescapable in any organisation -- it's a simple matter of survival. And whilst dramatic and radical change gets the management (and media) attention, it's often the sum of the many small increments of change which really makes the difference in competitive success. "Doing what we do better" -- continuous improvement -- may not be as glamorous as radical change but, as evidence from thousands of lean production, kaizen and other initiatives shows, it does make a difference to the bottom line.

Much attention has been paid in recent years to developing and refining a set of tools to help enable such innovation and many have their roots in the quality movement. Examples range from simple fishbone diagram techniques through to complex integrated programs such as six Sigma. One of the most powerful and enduring of these has been statistical process control which has its origins in work done in the United States in the early 1930s. In its present form it represents a powerful resource for problem finding since it provides a mechanism for identifying where key variables in the process are adrift and in targeting them for improvement activities. However an often remarked limitation of statistical process control is that almost all the discussion and reported experience of its application is based on the manufacturing sector.

This book attempts to redress this imbalance by looking carefully at where and how statistical process control can be applied in an office setting. Its coverage is broad and impressive: at one level it operates well as a readable introduction to statistical process control whatever your sector of interest. It has the considerable virtue of making some of the mathematics (which can so often be off-putting) easily accessible and relevant in the context of innovation and its management within the organisation.

Perhaps the key contribution in the book comes in the extensive case illustrations which are drawn from the wide experience of the authors in implementing in sustaining improvement through statistical process control in many different kinds of firm. The book begins by reviewing the concept of statistical process control and then quickly moves to an extended discussion of the concept of processes and how they can be mapped and measured within the organisation. The central section of the book deals with the technology of statistical process control, particularly control charts and how to construct them. It goes into considerable detail on the different ways in which control charts can be constructed but in each case provides helpful illustrated cases to clarify the points made. The latter part of the book mentions other relevant tools and techniques which can be used in conjunction with statistical process control to support continuous improvement and helpfully the final chapter discusses some of the difficulties involved in managing the successful implementation of statistical process control within organisations including training and change management issues.

Overall this represents a valuable hands-on guide to one of the proven powerful techniques for continuous improvement.

If you would like to order a copy of 'SPC in the Office' click here for an order form. At the special discount price of £30 (inclusive of post and packing in the UK).