Carroll Croarkin, James J.Filliben, William F.Guthrie,
Alan Heckert
Statistical Engineering Division, ITL
Paul Tobias, Jack Prins, Chelli Zey
SEMATECH
Barry Hembree
AMD
Ledi Trutna
Consultant to Motorola University
The Statistical Engineering Division is in the final stages
of a joint project with the Statistical Methods Group of
SEMATECH in developing a hyper-linked web
document for constructing
experiments and analyzing data in order to improve and
document measurement and production processes. It is
unique in allowing the reader to access statistical software
from within its pages to analyze case
studies in the Handbook or to reproduce the analyses
on other data.
The public domain software, Dataplot, developed at
NIST by J. Filliben, is coupled with the case studies
in the Handbook. The graphic on the facing page is a
page from a case study showing
how to construct a calibration curve
from data on instrument deflection as a function of load.
In May, William Guthrie, Carroll Croarkin and Paul Tobias
were invited to Ford Motor Co. by Dr. Steve Zayac
(Transmission Div.) to discuss implementing the
Handbook as a standard for
training in design of experiments and analysis of data
within the Ford community. The statisticians demonstrated
the operation of the Handbook and a script for building an
individualized course from selected Handbook materials
to Ford engineers and managers in the US
and Europe. A technical representative of MathSoft
demonstrated the interface of statistical software package,
Splus, with the Handbook and showed a MathSoft case
study on reliability that mimicked the Handbook format.
In August, 1999, the handbook was demonstrated at a
poster session, sponsored by the American Statistical
Association at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Baltimore, MD.
A beta version of the handbook was released to the public
for comment in September 1999 at
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/index.html.
A large number of comments and inquires
have been received about the availability of a hardcopy
version and down-loadable files.
There are no plans to release a hardcopy version
because of the hyperlinked nature of the document.
Current plans are for public release of web pages and
CD ROM at the end of the year. During the interim,
the handbook team will: i) enlist the services of a technical
editor to integrate the eight chapters into a smoothly
flowing document; ii) address issues of accessibility;
and iii) produce generic scripts that enable vendors of
statistical software to easily link their products to the
Handbook.
Figure 21: A case study from the chapter
on Process Modeling showing the use of
Dataplot to create a calibration curve for deflection
as a function of load