The answer to this question is yes, for several reasons:
1. Although it can be helpful to begin with manual methods of control charting at the
start of an SPC implementation, it is necessary to move successful applications to the
computer very soon. The computer is a great productivity improvement device. We don’t drive cars with the passenger safety systems of the 1960s and we don’t fly airplanes with 1960s avionics technology. We shouldn’t use 1960s technology with control charts either.
2. The computer will enable the SPC data to become part of the companywide manufacturing database, and in that form, the data will be useful (and hence more likely to be used) to everyone—management, engineering, marketing, and so on, not only manufacturing and quality.
3. A computer-based SPC system can provide more information than any manual system. It permits the user to monitor many quality characteristics and to provide automatic signaling of assignable causes.