Opportunities and challenges for industrial statisticians

The last 20 years have seen significant advances in the use of statistical methodology in industry, with applications in new product design and development, optimization and control of manufacturing processes, and in the service industries. The field of industrial statistics has emerged as an important branch of statistical science that focuses on this application environment. Yet as applications of statistics in industry have expanded, creating many new opportunities for the modern industrial statistician, many new challenges have arisen. Some of these challenges are technical, while others have managerial and organizational aspects. There are also important concerns pertaining to training and education. This presentation focuses on some of these issues, and identifies some potential solutions.