A collection of questions you may have about SPC-PC IV and the answers to these questions.

Our products undergo a series of peer and technical reviews before each release, where each and every change is reviewed and tested for conformance to the design, as well as unintended interaction with other features. Each of the calculations in the software has been methodically verified for accuracy. We continuously track customer problems and suggestions, and integrate these into timely development solutions. These methods have been a part of our culture for over a dozen years.

Our software has always been rated quite well for ease of use and functionality. Our free technical support has always been rated exceptional for responding to customer needs.

Macros can be run from MS Excel or MS Word to automate chart creation in SPC-PC IV. We have a number of example macros provided in the Help System. More recently, those using macros have instead opted for our more robust QA-ActiveSPC solution, which allows you to develop customized solutions to your SPC needs. If you’re going to be writing code, QA-ActiveSPC offers much more flexibility and a more customized solution.

If you have SPC-PC IV installed on the computer, when you double-click on the control chart, it will open the chart in an OLE window. (The OLE window is a special application window created by MS Windows for opening software such as SPC-PC IV. This window provides only the options pertaining to this specific chart. Options like opening a different file are not available from this window.) To update the data, select the "Go To Data" option from the right mouse menu. SPC-PC IV will prompt you to open the data file (which will be automatically found if unmoved from the last open), where the data file can be edited with new data. Closing the SPC-PC IV OLE window will then update the chart in the Word file.

Generally, SPC control charts used fixed subgroup sizes. Statistically, it's been shown that larger subgroup sizes (greater than ten or so) do not give much more information than the smaller sizes (less than three), so practitioners will generally decide on an economic subgroup size based on the cost of going out of control versus the cost of sampling.

Quality America's SPC software (all products) support varying subgroup sizes, primarily for when samples within particular subgroups must be discarded due to bad data. Once a subgroup size has been specified, the software will properly re-calculate the control limits for subgroups having less data than the specified subgroup size. To use this feature when subgroup size is based on batch size, the largest batch size may be input as the subgroup size.

It should be noted that the use of the control charts in this manner must consider the concept of rational subgroups (see, for example: http://www.qualityamerica.com/knowledgecente/knowctrRational_Subgroups.htm). A control chart's subgroups are rational when the system of causes of process variation within the subgroups is the same system that influences between subgroup variation. The "within subgroup" variation is then a good predictor of the "between subgroup" variation. In the case of "batch to batch" variation, this requirement may not be met. For some processes, such as chemical processes, it is likely that the within batch variation is not a good predictor of between batch variation, since the components (or underlying causes) of variation are different. In cases like these, it is best to maintain two sets of control charts: one set that monitors each batch, during its course of operation; and a second control chart that plots the average batch parameter, for all batches, as an Individual data value. In this latter control chart, the Moving Range chart is used to monitor the between batch variation.

Our SPC products are useful in a wide variety of industries. Green Bay Packaging identified parameters critical to their customer (such as cycle time, compressibility, or material thickness), or internal parameters critical for their processes to meet the customer requirements (such as line speed, adhesion, etc.), and used our control charts to monitor the process for statistical stability. When process instability was detected (as out of control points), they knew that this increase in process variation could have an adverse impact on their customers, so they took steps to correct it.

It’s quite simple to access data from other sources. Excel, text (comma, tab and space delimited), and dbf files can be opened directly through the File Open command, or connected dynamically using ODBC (Open Database Connectivity: Windows architecture for extracting data from spreadsheets and databases).

In addition, unlike some of the other software you are reviewing, our ODBC connections provide for user-specified Join conditions, which are necessary when databases use multiple tables for data storage. If you check with your database administrators, you’ll find that nearly all databases uses Reference tables for storing information. For example, in a Data table, you may find a column to hold the specific data value, as well as columns that reference a Patient ID, a Procedure ID, and a number of other associated informational fields. The reference to the Procedure ID, for example, may list a number such as 12, and you would need to go to the Procedures table to understand that Procedure ID = 12 means Angioplasty. When you do an ODBC query, you want to specify these links between the tables so the query automatically provides the relevant information (in this case, Angioplasty) rather than an ambiguous database reference such as “12”. If you have the ability to specify these joins (as in SPC-PC IV), your results would indicate the Procedure is “Angioplasty”. If you can’t specify Joins (as in other software), the Procedure would be listed as “12”.

Once an ODBC connected has been defined within an SPC-PC IV file, it is saved with the file. When the file is opened at a later time, you are prompted to refresh the query, which will automatically get any new or edited data from the source. You can also set up the queries within SPC-PC IV to automatically look for new data every x minutes.

Quality America has provided SPC software since 1983. We have sold hundreds, perhaps thousands, of licenses of our various packages (including SPC-PC IV, SPC IV Excel, QA-ActiveSPC) to the healthcare community over the past dozen or so years. A partial list in the Healthcare community from only the last year or so include:

Arkansas Heart Hospital, Austin Surgical Hospital, Avera McKennan Hospital, Bakersfield Heart Hospital, Buchanen General Hospital, Callahan Eye Foundation Hospital, Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital, Louisiana Heart Hospital, Oklahoma Heart Hospital, St. Michael’s Hospital, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, Tucson Heart Hospital, Spectrum Health, Schaller Anderson, Medcath

It is likely that other hospitals also have our software, or a private label version such as The Memory Jogger Software by Goal QPC, sold by one of our many resellers or consultants. We would have to get permission from any of these clients if you felt you needed to contact someone as a reference.

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