Statistical process control-the British Sugar experience

British Sugar has a long history of using statistical process control (SPC) in the control of product weights but has only, in the last three years, used the technique within the manufacturing process itself. In the 1988-9 beet processing season, SPC was introduced at the Peterborough plant using it as a test bed. Several valuable lessons were learnt from the trial, lessons which made the implementation of SPC at the Company´s remaining 11 factories more effective. During 1989 an extensive training program was carried out to ensure that key production, scientific and engineering staff at all sites were conversant with the method and theory of SPC. Throughout this recent history, in-house software was developed to allow user-friendly and rapid statistical analysis of data. Some was written to overcome the `cultural hurdles´. It is now used both when setting up SPC on a new process parameter and when the effectiveness of SPC is being monitored. The paper describes the use of SPC within British Sugar plc, whilst also giving some detail of the principles contained within the software