[QUOTE=Brian Ratliff;18362768]Fair enough. But this discussion is not about the meaning of various quality engineering buzzwords. QUOTE]

You do the quality management industry a grave disservice by dismissing their concepts as "buzzwords". Considering that statistical quality management was one of the most significant developments in manufacturing during the whole 20th century, giving it a backhand slap like that is really unwarranted. Mass production was a big deal in the early 1900's, but without statistical quality management it was seriously handicapped.