Quality Engineering & Process Improvement Research Group
Statistical quality control, experimental design, and waste reduction to elevate manufacturing processes.
This group asks a deceptively simple question: why do defects happen, and how do you stop them from happening again? In production processes where a small amount of variation can mean enormous cost — especially in precision industries like electronics and pharmaceuticals — the group treats quality as something to be controlled and improved systematically through statistics, rather than fixed case by case as problems arise.
Its core toolkit includes design of experiments to find the right production parameters, statistical process control charts built for data that doesn't follow a normal distribution, process capability analysis for comparing raw-material suppliers, and lean six sigma methods for cutting waste out of production.
That toolkit has gone to work on tangible problems: reducing the gold used in plating electronic components, strengthening wire bonds in optical transceivers, cutting defects in glass-bottle forming, and controlling quality in tablet manufacturing — the product of a sustained, hands-on relationship with industry partners over many years.