An Example of Dynamic Graphics for Manufacturing Process Data

Dynamic graphical methods can be usefully applied to the analysis of continuous manufacturing process data. This paper describes some data collected during an ongoing project which addresses a particular manufacturing problem and describes a method developed to display the data. The nature of the manufacturing problem and the computational requirements of a dynamic graphical display prevented the more common interactive approach. We describe a graphical display we developed for these data and discuss the impact our display has had on the manufacturing process. In an appendix we brieey describe a system we have developed to display such data animations. The equipment used to generate the videotape was acquired with partial support from NSF Grant DMS 88-05406. The authors thank Vijay Nair and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.