In the control of quality of manufactured product, it is one thing to measure the quality to see whether or not it meets certain standards and it is quite another thing to make use of these measurements to predict and control the quality in the future.

– Walter A. Shewhart, The father of the process behavior chart
It has been said that the key to managing the chaos of manufacturing is understanding variation. Yet, as useful as this insight may be, it is generally ignored. This course changes that. It empowers students with the theory and practical tools that make reducing the costs and improving the quality of manufactured products possible.
Characterization is the task of determining if future process behavior can be predicted within limits. It asks the question:
Is all the data within the process limits?
If it is, future behavior is predictable. If it is not, future behavior is unpredictable. Depending on the characterization, your process improvement efforts will take discrete but related paths.
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