Creating And Working With Control Charts In Excel

Abstract

With the growth in distance education offerings, instructors who now teach quantitative material via the web have been faced with many challenges.  Foremost has been the need to develop appropriate methods for teaching such material to students who are not physically in the classroom.  Methodologies that have traditionally been taught in a highly interactive mode in the classroom must now be presented effectively in a far more asynchronous environment.  Tutorials and detailed handouts are one way to accomplish this.  We present a written tutorial for creating quality control charts using Excel.  The tutorial guides students through the process of creating X-bar and R charts in such a way as to reinforce the theoretical basis of quality control already taught.  Students apply their knowledge in hands-on activity, learn how to improve Excel’s default charts to create visually effective control charts, and learn to reuse/recycle their work to easily create additional charts for different sets of problem data.