Walter A Shewhart, 1924, and the Hawthorne factory

In May that year Walter Shewhart described the first control chart which launched statistical process control and quality improvement. 2 Shewhart's historical memorandum of 16 May 1924 proposed the use of the statistical control chart to his supervisors. 2 In the preface to his book "Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product" 9 Shewhart stated: "The object of industry is to set up economic ways of satisfying human wants and in so doing to reduce everything possible to routines requiring a minimum amount of human effort. For over 50 years clinical laboratories have embraced Shewhart's ideas and incorporated statistical process control into standard operating procedures for clinical laboratory quality control 10- 12 and proficiency testing. 13 More recently, other industries have re-discovered Shewhart's tools of statisical process control.