I’m really curious about why SPC is such a niche knowledge, limited primarily to the manufacturing sector. In the 1990s, GE popularized Six Sigma techniques, and there was a lot of interest in expanding those methods to other domains. In my own survey of the literature, I found a number of thinkers that explicitly transferred these techniques to the domains of healthcare, service sector work, and education. And then…it all sort of disappeared? I’m not involved enough in healthcare to know if SPC is still practiced there, but I’ve seen enough to be confident that it’s all but forgotten in the service sector and education.
I feel like I must be missing something. I’m fully on the WBR train. So if it didn’t stick in these sectors, either there is some complication that makes it harder, or less powerful, or…what? Business folks just decided they didn’t like using tools that would make them better at their jobs? That sounds pretty stupid. So what’s a better explanation of what happened? Why aren’t XmR charts as common in business as Pivot Tables?