Just weeks after earning my industrial statistics degree, I hired on with a major aerospace company. My first “real” job entailed working with engineers and operators to deploy statistical process control (SPC) in a large machine shop. I quickly found out that the warm, coddling confines of a university classroom had done little to prepare me for the complexities of a short-run, aerospace SPC deployment. I found myself confronted with a bewildering array of different machines, jigs, tooling aids, part numbers, and union rules. As a newly hired statistician, I was stunned to find that the aerospace world lacked any similarity to what I had been reading in my statistical texts. Although 20 years have passed, I remember a great deal about my experience because that shop floor taught me a lot about the practical application of SPC.

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