Editorial – European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics 2012

Abstract

) as the programme committee chair and Professor Irena Ograjenšek as the organising committee chair. The abstracts of the oral and poster presentations can be consulted at http://www.enbis.org/activities/events/current/214_ENBIS_12/abstracts?_ts=35967.At its conference, Professor William H. Woodall (Virginia Tech, USA) received the Box Medal for his outstanding contributions to industrial statistics. Maroussa Zagoraiou (University of Bologna) received the Young Statistician Award, which recognises the work of young people in introducing innovative methods, promoting the use of Statistics and/or successfully using it in the daily practice. Finally, Michael Branson (Novartis Pharma AG, Basel) received the Best Manager Award, which meant to recognise managers who gave a significant contribution to the success of their companies by advancing the spread and the practice of business and industrial statistics. More details about the award and nominations can be found at http://www.enbis.org/awards/index?_ts=271156.The ten papers in this special edition demonstrate that, in the spirit of ENBIS, statistical methodology should be driven by real practical problems. Several papers in this special issue deal with statistical process control. Castagliola et al.1 discuss Shewhart-type attribute control charts. Vives-Mestres, Daunis-i-Estadella and Martín-Fernández 2 propose a method for interpreting the out-of-control signals of the T 2 C control chart for three-part compositions. Vidmar and Blagus 3 compare four approaches for outlier detection in healthcare monitoring. Three papers in the special issue deal with reliability issues. Kurz, Lewitschnig and Pilz 4 discuss a Bayesian estimation for Weibull early-life failure distributions. Dror 5 utilises a House of Reliability to develop reliability programme activities. McCollin and Coleman 6 illustrate the importance of awareness, understanding and utilisation of physical knowledge when applying statistical methods in his work on statistical engineering by looking at a historical published maintenance data set in a reliability context. The remaining papers in the special issue cover other topics such as cloud computing, analysis of data from small experiments and data-based manufacturing improvement methods and statistical consulting. Diez and Silva 7 discuss the resilience of cloud computing in critical systems. Aguirre-Torres and de la Vara 8 present a Bayesian analysis for very small unreplicated experiments. Doganaksoy and Hahn 9 discuss data-based methods for improving a manufacturing process by means of a case study dealing with the manufacture of stator bars used in electric power generation equipment. Finally, Marco-Almagro, Grima and Tort-Martorell 10 discuss several issues in consulting on design of experiments. Quality and Reliability Engineering International has been a close partner of ENBIS and publishes, every year, a special ENBIS issue. With the growing number of papers and submission, the task of the special issue editor has become increasingly complex. In pu...