Advisory Group and Acknowledgements.

I am very honoured that the following people have joined our Advisory Group. They are all concerned with science and technology in some way and have been helpful and supportive in the generation of this system. We list them in reverse alphabetical order.

• Granville Tunnicliffe-Wilson, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Lancaster University.

  It has been my privilege to work with Granville on a number of occasions. He has been a source of advice and help and has been aware of this project for a long time. He is of course an expert on many aspects of statistical modelling with particular interests in time series.

• John Shade, Good Decision Partnership, Dunfermline.

  John has been a force and campaigner for industrial statistics over many years and has been another font of good ideas. He has been a leading figure in ENBIS, the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics with particular focus on consultancy, as well as being active in 6-sigma training.

  John writes:

  Statistical methods can make a huge contribution to the success of businesses and other enterprises, especially within an environment designed to encourage fast and effective analytic and innovative thinking. Statisticians are quite hard to find, and may be beyond the financial reach of small companies unless they can agree a gain-sharing payment system. These ideas for increasing access to good statistical ideas are very welcome, not only for those smaller companies, but also for the growing numbers of statistically competent managers and leaders being cultivated by Six Sigma programmes. They want effective and readily used techniques and perspectives for addressing unwanted variation. Industrial-statistics.com can help feed, encourage, and support that desire for improvement.

• Ron Kenett, Director, KPA Management Consulting, Israel.

  Ron has been a great supporter of this programme from the outset and is another leader of ENBIS. Read his excellent book Modern Industrial Statistics.

  Ron writes:

  Modern information technology is offering new opportunities for industrial statistics. This site's pioneering work is focussed on leveraging internet technology to the development and dissemination of industrial statistics.  WWW.INDUSTRIAL-STATISTICS.COM is a unique site which demonstrates what can be done with such synergies.

• Ted Harding, Waterland Research, Cambridge.

  Ted used to be at UMIST and much of the original planning for this system was carried out in consultation with him and he maintains an active interest in it. I have also had the pleasure of working with him as well as consulting him on numerous computing issues.

• Tony Greenfield, Visiting Professor, Industrial Statistics Research Unit, Newcastle University; Director, Greenfield Research;Past vice-president of the RSS and past president of ENBIS.

  Tony is a long-term proponent of statistics in industry and has been very important in the development of this site. I have had the great pleasure of working with him particularly as associate editor of ENBIS Magazine, which appears bi-monthly in Scientific Computing World.

  Tony writes:

  I am committed to the belief that statistical methods can help all manufacturers to improve their product performance characteristics and the efficiency of their manufacturing processes. Every product can be improved in terms of quality, performance and other properties. The quality or performance of a product may be enhanced by changing the production process or the composition of the product, or its dimensions. Profitability will be influenced directly if the process time can be cut or the cost of components diminished. There will be a reduced need for expensive quality control inspection if the manufacturing process can be tuned to ensure a better product. Statistical methods can also assist manpower and resource management, production control, purchasing and stock control and sales forecasting.

  Since the wealth of this country is created by the manufacturing industries, they should adopt statistical methods which can contribute so much to their effectiveness. We are here to help.

• Luke Georghiou, Associate Dean for Research, Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester, formely Director of PREST, University of Manchester. 2004/5 President of the Manchester Statistical Society.

  Luke has been a supporter of this programme for many years now.

• Frank Duckworth, Editor, RSS News, the in-house magazine for Fellows of the Royal Statistical Society.

  I have known Frank for far many years since the days when we both worked on corrosion problems in the UK nuclear industry. He is a another font of good ideas and contacts. He shares the ambition of this site to promote the use of sound statistical methodology in industry.

• Shirley Coleman, Director, Director of Industrial Statistics Research Unit, University of Newcastle, Chair of Quality Improvement Section of Royal Statistical Society, 2004/5 President of the European Network of Business and Industrial Statisticians (ENBIS); past Associate Professor of the Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland.

  Shirley is an important person on the UK and European industrial statistics scene but somehow always remains bright and cheerful and an inspiration to us all.

  Shirley writes:

  ISRU is a self-financing Unit dedicated to promoting business productivity and competitiveness through the application of statistical thinking. We thoroughly support the Industrial Statistics website. We look forward to making more and more use of the website as it continues to develop.

• Jonathan Aylen, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, formerly Centre for Manufacture, UMIST.

  Jonathan has been in touch with this programme for a long time now and has had a close interest in the promotion of manufacturing in the UK.

I would also like to acknowledge the help and support of my family without whom I would not have been able to build this system. I would also like to acknowledge my many friends and colleagues from the past and present as well as the Royal Statistical Society and ENBIS. I would also like to acknowledge those involved in the technical building of the site at Kusala. Without encouragement from all of these, this system would probably never have seen the light of day.

John Logsdon