The barriers to acceptance of statistical methods of quality control in UK manufacturing industry

Abstract

The work described in this paper is part of a large investigation of the usage of statistical methods of quality control (SQC) in British manufacturing industry. The introduction provides a review of previous work, which revealed that industry in the UK makes surprisingly little use of SQC techniques. These results were so striking that a further investigation was initiated to discover:

(i) the ‘barriers to acceptance’ of SQC

(ii) a methodology for its successful implementation

This paper describes the first phase of this work, which was aimed at discovering the reasons for the low usage of SQC. In summary, the major barrier preventing companies from introducing SQC is lack of knowledge. Whilst this was often not the first reason given, much circumstantial evidence from questionnaires and direct evidence from interviews suggests that decisions are often taken on the basis of very little or no knowledge. Clearly, there is an urgent need to increase awareness and knowledge of SQC.