ENBIS: European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics

My abstracts

The following abstracts have been accepted for this event:

• Consultancy Skills for Statisticians
  
  Authors: Roland Caulcutt
  Affiliation: Caulcutt Associates
  Primary area of focus / application:
  

  Submitted at 29-Mar-2008 15:32 by Roland Caulcutt
  Accepted
  

  25-Sep-2008 09:00 Consultancy Skills for Statisticians
  Format: 1 day Post-conference
  
  Cost: 150 EUR
  
  Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008
  
  Presenter: Roland Caulcutt
  
  This workshop is kindly sponsored by Caulcutt Associates
  
  Abstract
  
  
  
  Objectives:
  
  1. To review the many context-related and inter-personal difficulties that statisticians may encounter during consultancy interactions.
  
  2. To offer models or theories or paradigms, which shed light on why these difficulties arise.
  
  3. To indicate which ways of working might be most effective with various clients.
  
  Style
  
  A highly participative workshop for statisticians who wish to improve their ability to help non-statistical clients. Discussions and interactive exercises will allow participants to explore the non-statistical issues that can undermine effective consultancy.
  
  Topics
  
  
  
  “Introduction”
  
  The statistical consultant advises his/her client on the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, in a particular context How do the roles of statistician and client differ and how well does the statistician need to understand the client and the context in order to add maximum value?
  
  ”Communication between statistician and client”
  
  It has been demonstrated that communication is much easier if statistician and client have similar personality types. What difficulties are you likely to have with different types? In the workshop we will discuss the difficulties you are likely to encounter and propose some ways of addressing these. [To discover your personality type, go to http://www.humanmetrics.com, or www.personalitypathways.com.] ;
  
  “Consultancy. What’s in it for me?”
  
  If a statistician focuses solely on statistical advice or data analysis, then he or she is likely to encounter difficulties in the consulting relationship. All stakeholders of the consultancy interaction are seeking to satisfy their own personal needs. How can the statistician recognise these needs and adapt his/her approach?
  
  
  Closing discussions
• Design of Experiments: New Methods and How to Use Them
  
  Authors: Douglas C. Montgomery, Regents’ Professor ASU, Bradley Jones, SAS/JMP
  Primary area of focus / application:
  Keywords: Experimental Design, Workshop, Mixture designs, Split-plot
  

  Submitted at 29-Mar-2008 15:36 by Bradley Jones
  Accepted
  

  25-Sep-2008 09:00 Design of Experiments: New Methods and How to Use Them
  Format: 1 day Post-conference
  
  
  
  Cost: 150 EUR
  
  
  
  Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008
  
  Presenters: Douglas C. Montgomery, Regents’ Professor ASU, Bradley Jones, SAS/JMP
  
  
  
  Interest in design of experiments (DOX) has greatly increased in recent years. Many organizations have effectively integrated the design of experiments methodology into their overall operational improvement strategy, including those deploying six sigma and design for six sigma (DFSS). DOX is the most powerful of the six sigma tools, and its impact on product design and development, manufacturing, and production operations can be profound.
  
  
  
  Well-designed experiments are a powerful tool for developing and validating cause and effect relationships when evaluating and improving product and process performance. Designed experiments are the only efficient way to verify the impact of changes in product or process factors on actual performance.
  
  
  
  This course on DOX is unique in that it discusses new approaches to choosing a design and analyzing the resulting data that have only been recently available. These methods allow you to solve the most complex experimental design problems easily and directly using the same general approach.
  
  
  
  The course is taught by two internationally known experts in the field, one of whom is the author of the most widely-used textbook on the subject. The instructors have over 60 years of experience in teaching and using DOX in a wide variety of industrial end business settings. The course focuses on several major aspects of DOX, including both the practical and the statistical aspects, and interpretation of results.
  
  
  
  Course Topics
  
  • Factorials and fractional factorials
  
  • Irregular fractional factorial designs and their advantages
  
  • Optimal designs
  
  • Response surface designs
  
  • Mixture experiments
  
  • Robust design
  
  • Split-plot experiments
• Statistics in Innovation and the Design Process
  
  Authors: Shirley Coleman and Tony Fouweather
  Affiliation: Industrial Statistics Research Unit,www.isru.ncl.ac.uk, Newcastle University
  Primary area of focus / application:
  Keywords: Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, Experimental Design, Innovation
  

  Submitted at 30-Mar-2008 10:56 by Shirley Coleman
  Accepted
  

  24-Sep-2008 14:00 Statistics in Innovation and the Design Process
  Workshop on Statistics in Innovation and the Design Process to be held during ENBIS 8 conference in Athens, Greece 22-24 September 2008. The workshop will include contributions from I*PROMS partners University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Patras, Cardiff University Mechanical Engineering Centre and IFW, Hannover University.
  
  The use of statistical methods can aid all stages of the design process. Statistical thinking can enhance innovation and improve competitiveness in both domestic and international markets. I*PROMS partners, ENBIS conference attendees and local SMEs are encouraged to attend the workshop as they can potentially use statistical techniques to improve their prospects. Case studies will focus on how innovators have made good use of statistically designed experiments, measurement analysis and other lean and six sigma techniques.
  
  The purpose of the special IPROMS workshop is to show the power of statistics to help innovation and the design process and to show statisticians where quantification is needed and is useful in other specialties. The cross-fertilisation of ideas will encourage future collaboration.
  
  The event follows on from the successful joint IPROMS/ENBIS workshops held at the ENBIS-5 & ENBIS-6 conferences in Newcastle in September 2005 and Wroclaw in September 2006.
  
  Outline of Workshop
  • 1400 Welcome and Introductions
  • 1415 Fuzzy Logic connectives for evaluation in Engineering Design
  • 1500 Break
  • 1515 Innovation through Six Sigma methodology
  • 1600 Application of DoE to crankshaft grinding
  • 1630 Panel Discussion
  • 17.00 Close
  
  Newcastle, Patras, Cardiff and Hannover Universities are partners in the Innovative Production Machines and Systems (I*PROMS) Network of Excellence funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme (Contract No. 500273)
  I*PROMS, www.iproms.org.
• Statistical Leadership: From Consultant to Effective Leader
  
  Authors: Roger Hoerl
  Affiliation: GE Research
  Primary area of focus / application:
  Keywords: Leadership, Consultancy
  

  Submitted at 30-Mar-2008 11:04 by enbis master
  Accepted
  

  21-Sep-2008 09:00 Statistical Leadership: From Consultant to Effective Leader
  Many statisticians in consulting roles would like to enhance their impact on the organizations with which they consult. While statisticians’ contributions may be very significant, all too often the statistician is viewed as playing a supporting, rather than leading role in project success. Similarly, the statistician is often viewed as someone passively giving advice, or performing narrow technical tasks predetermined by others, rather than proactively making things happen and delivering results. Several changes are occurring in our environment that make this situation even more important for us to address. These include corporate downsizing and delayering, which make it more difficult to justify passive consultant roles in the organizational chart, and the enhanced statistical education provided to others both in academia and the private sector (through initiatives such as Six Sigma). Another important change is the proliferation of easy to use statistical software, which allows others to perform lower-level statistical tasks traditionally done by professional statisticians. Perhaps most important is the pervasive impact of the Internet, which now allows sophisticated data analysis to be outsourced to anywhere around the globe quite easily.
  
  
  
  The purpose of this workshop is to enhance the effectiveness of statisticians in business, industry, and pharmaceuticals, particularly as it relates to exhibiting leadership. The goal is to help statisticians transition from being viewed as passive consultants to being viewed as proactive leaders within their organizations. In conjunction with this workshop, several senior business leaders, CEOs, and other executives were interviewed to obtain their insights into how statisticians could have more impact. In addition, recent statistics graduates were polled to obtain their perspectives on their current roles, and what skills they feel are necessary to succeed. These insights will be shared and discussed at the workshop. Attendees will also participate in breakouts to determine specific changes needed in their own environments, and to develop a tangible plan to go about making them happen.
• Modelling inter-annual variability of extreme events of significant wave height around Spain
  
  Authors: A. Luceño, F.J. Méndez, M. Menéndez and I.J. Losada
  Affiliation: University of Cantabria
  Primary area of focus / application:
  

  Submitted at 1-Apr-2008 13:00 by Alberto Luceño
  Accepted
  

  22-Sep-2008 11:51 Modelling inter-annual variability of extreme events of significant wave height around Spain
  We present some statistical models to analyze the inter annual variability of extreme events in the coast of Spain. Among other applications, the results can be used to define the harbour tranquillity and the operability of maritime works.
• Group Inspection of Dependent Binary Processes
  
  Authors: Christian H. Weiß
  Affiliation: University of Würzburg
  Primary area of focus / application:
  

  Submitted at 2-Apr-2008 08:07 by Christian Weiß
  Accepted
  

  22-Sep-2008 14:00 Group Inspection of Dependent Binary Processes
  The statistical control of attribute data processes is an area of emerging interest both in research and professional practice. Often one is concerned with binary attribute processes. Such binary quality characteristics may describe the result of an inspection of an item: A nonconformity is a non-fulfillment of a requirement in general, while a defect can be considered as a serious nonconformity, as a non-fulfillment of a requirement related to an intended or specified use (DIN EN ISO 9000, 2005, p. 27). In practice, it is often impossible to monitor the process continuously: The evaluation of the items may be too expensive or perhaps even destroy the items, the evaluation takes too much time (at least relative to the process speed), or it may be quite complex (e. g., endurance or tolerance tests). If the process cannot be monitored continuously, then one can analyze connected segments instead, where two successive segments have a sufficiently large time-lag such that they can be assumed to be approximately independent of each other. Nevertheless, the serial dependence has to be considered at least within the segments, i. e., the distribution of the segment sums is not binomial anymore.
  
  We propose the Markov binomial distribution to approximate the true distribution of the segment sums. Based on this distribution, we develop a Markov np chart and a Markov EWMA chart. We show how average run lengths (ARL) can be computed exactly for both types of chart. Based on such ARL computations, we derive recommendations for chart design and investigate the out-of-control performance. A real-data example of counts of web accesses illustrates the application of these charts in practice.