
NIST Handbook of Engineering Statistics (2012) - tomrod
https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/
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DavidPeiffer
I talked with someone in food manufacturing who mentioned the NIST guidelines
for "did you short fill to your stated quantity" are more lax if you have
variability in the size of the pieces. With well calibrated measurement
devices, you could slightly short fill and but be totally legal. I'm looking
for the specific formula they use to determine this, but my Google-fu is a bit
lacking on this one.

I talked with another person who was at a meat packing plant. At the end of
the manufacturing line for ground beef, there was a little machine which would
extrude a tiny string of ground beef. The weight was precisely measured, a
prescribed amount was added to get it to its required package weight, then it
was packaged. He said the plant ran on ~3% profit margin, so they went quite
far down the praeto of cost saving ideas.

I also know of an intern at Proctor & Gamble who noticed an overfilling of
mouthwash. With the volumes they ran, they had annual savings of hundreds of
thousands of dollars by better calibrating things.

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extrapickles
Last I checked, net-weighted (not individually weighed) meat has to be at or
above indicated weight. This means slightly overfilling because of moisture
loss, as they still have to make package weight on the last day the product is
still good.

Non-meats can be slightly under-filled but the running average must be at
weight (this can be gamed slightly with good equipment).

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drtse4
PDF link:
[https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/toolaids/pff/E-Hand...](https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/toolaids/pff/E-Handbook.pdf.zip)

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sidpatil
I was expecting a nicely-typeset PDF, but it looks like they simply printed
the webpage to a PDF.

The content is probably in the public domain though, so maybe I'll take that
on as a challenge—to produce a proper PDF edition.

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excitednumber
One of the OG knowledge websites for me. What a great resource.

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stevan
Does anyone know of any applications of statistical techniques, like the ones
in the handbook, to software engineering in general or testing in particular?

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stagger87
In the test and measurement industry these methods and ideas are heavily used
in manufacturing, adjustment, calibration, and depending on the equipment
several core measurements (ccdf, evm, etc). All of this would be implemented
in software.

