Dorian Shainin
Encyclopedia
Dorian Shainin was an influential American quality consultant, aeronautics engineer, author, and college professor most notable for his contributions in the fields of industrial problem solving, product reliability, and quality engineering, particularly the creation and development of the “Red X” concept.

Shainin , founder of the technical-problem-solving company Shainin LLC, is responsible for the development of over 20 statistical engineering techniques that have become the core of the “Shainin System” for quality and reliability improvement.

Throughout his life, Dorian Shainin worked to improve the quality and reliability of an array of products, including paper, printing, textiles, rubber, nuclear energy, airplanes, automobiles, cassette decks, space ships, light bulbs and disposable diapers, with clients representing over 200 different industries, ranging from the U.S. Department of Defense, Rolls Royce
Rolls-Royce Limited
Rolls-Royce Limited was a renowned British car and, from 1914 on, aero-engine manufacturing company founded by Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce on 15 March 1906 as the result of a partnership formed in 1904....

 Ltd. and Exxon
Exxon
Exxon is a chain of gas stations as well as a brand of motor fuel and related products by ExxonMobil. From 1972 to 1999, Exxon was the corporate name of the company previously known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or Jersey Standard....

 to Polaroid
Polaroid Corporation
Polaroid Corporation is an American-based international consumer electronics and eyewear company, originally founded in 1937 by Edwin H. Land. It is most famous for its instant film cameras, which reached the market in 1948, and continued to be the company's flagship product line until the February...

, Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

, AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

 and Ford Motor. In total, Shainin advised over 800 companies, 43 of which were among the Fortune 100.

Early life

Dorian Shainin was born in San Francisco on September 26, 1914. He grew up in San Francisco, Shanghai, and New York. He attended Erasmus Hall High School
Erasmus Hall High School
Erasmus Hall Campus High School is a four-year public high school in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, United States operated by the New York City Department of Education....

 in Brooklyn, New York.

Early career

After receiving his degree in aeronautical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 (MIT) in 1936, Shainin became a design engineer at the Hamilton Standard Division of United Aircraft Corporation (now United Technologies Corporation
United Technologies Corporation
United Technologies Corporation is an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in the United Technologies Building in Hartford, Connecticut...

).

In 1939 US industry had begun to focus on the war effort, and Shainin became a licensee coordinator responsible for helping new Hamilton Standard licensees solve problems. By the end of the war, Shainin was in charge of quality and reliability at Hamilton Standard, having gained national recognition for his invention of the Hamilton Standard Lot Plot.

Lot Plot

Lot Plot refers to a statistical method for acceptance sampling developed by Dorian Shainin in the 1940s. This statistical technique uses the graphical analysis of variable sample data in order to determine if a lot consisting of potentially faulty parts should be accepted or set aside for 100% inspection.

Walter A. Shewhart
Walter A. Shewhart
Walter Andrew Shewhart March 18, 1891 - March 11, 1967) was an American physicist, engineer and statistician, sometimes known as the father of statistical quality control.W...

’s development of control charts demonstrated the application of statistical techniques to manufacturing and illustrated the effectiveness of graphical presentation and analysis. Shainin incorporated these concepts in his development of Lot Plot.

In 1946 Shainin was able to demonstrate to the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics that Lot Plot was more effective than 100% inspection. Following this, the Navy agreed to make Lot Plot a standard. Soon Lot Plot was adopted as a standard across many industries.

Taking the advice of his friend and mentor Joseph M. Juran
Joseph M. Juran
Joseph Moses Juran was a 20th century management consultant who is principally remembered as an evangelist for quality and quality management, writing several influential books on those subjects. He was the brother of Academy Award winner Nathan H...

, Shainin turned to the world of consulting. In 1952 Shainin joined Rath & Strong, Inc., a management consulting firm based in Lexington, Massachusetts, holding the position of Senior Vice President.

Red X and Pareto

Shainin's development of the “Red X” concept originated from his association with Joseph Juran. In the 1940s Juran coined and popularized the notion of “the vital few and trivial many,” also known as “The Pareto Principle,” recognizing the uneven impact of problems on business performance to be the same phenomenon that Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto , born Wilfried Fritz Pareto, was an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist and philosopher. He made several important contributions to economics, particularly in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices....

 had observed in respect to the distribution of wealth
Distribution of wealth
The distribution of wealth is a comparison of the wealth of various members or groups in a society. It differs from the distribution of income in that it looks at the distribution of ownership of the assets in a society, rather than the current income of members of that society.-Definition of...

. As suggested by Juran, “I observed (as had many others before me) that quality defects are unequal in frequency, i.e., when a long list of defects was arranged in the order of frequency, a relative few of the defects accounted for the bulk of the defectiveness.”

In the 1950s Shainin recognized that the Pareto principle could be applied effectively to the solving of variation problems. Shainin concluded that, amongst the thousands of variables that could cause a change in the value of an output, one cause-effect relationship had to be stronger than the others. Shainin called this primary cause the “Big Red X” and demonstrated that the cause can exist as an interaction among independent variables. The effect of the Red X is then magnified by the square-root-of-the-sum-of-the-squares law, thereby isolating the root cause.

Shainin asserted that his application of statistical methods was more cost-effective and simpler than Taguchi methods
Taguchi methods
Taguchi methods are statistical methods developed by Genichi Taguchi to improve the quality of manufactured goods, and more recently also applied to, engineering, biotechnology, marketing and advertising...

. In order to determine the "Red X," Shainin would swap pairs of parts between functional and faulty equipment until the one part responsible for the failure is discovered. Shainin would claim that he could often find the primary defective part within a dozen paired swaps.

Shainin's policy of "talking to the parts" was the primary distinguishing factor that set his methods apart from Taguchi's. In classical or Taguchi DOE (Design of Experiments
Design of experiments
In general usage, design of experiments or experimental design is the design of any information-gathering exercises where variation is present, whether under the full control of the experimenter or not. However, in statistics, these terms are usually used for controlled experiments...

), engineers would brainstorm to form hypotheses regarding possible causes of a problem. Shainin's methods postpone this theoretical step, requiring first the diagnosis of causes via one or more of four clue generation techniques designed to determine, through the empirical testing of the actual parts in question, the root cause, or "Red X".

In the 1940s Leonard Seder, an MIT classmate and friend, developed the Multi-vari chart
Multi-vari chart
In quality control, multi-vari charts are a visual way of presenting variability through a series of charts. The content and format of the charts has evolved over time.-Original concept:...

, a graphical method for analysis of variance. Shainin was an early adopter of this method, discovering that with Multi-vari charts, he could quickly converge on the root cause of a problem. Multi-vari charts also played an influential role in Shainin’s development of the Red X concept.

Influences

Among the statisticians and mathematicians who influenced Shainin’s thinking were Ronald Fisher
Ronald Fisher
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS was an English statistician, evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and geneticist. Among other things, Fisher is well known for his contributions to statistics by creating Fisher's exact test and Fisher's equation...

, John Tukey
John Tukey
John Wilder Tukey ForMemRS was an American statistician.- Biography :Tukey was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1915, and obtained a B.A. in 1936 and M.Sc. in 1937, in chemistry, from Brown University, before moving to Princeton University where he received a Ph.D...

, and Waloddi Weibull
Waloddi Weibull
Ernst Hjalmar Waloddi Weibull was a Swedish engineer, scientist, and mathematician.Weibull came from a family that had strong ties to Scania...

.

Shainin’s convergence techniques have the capability of reducing the number of Red X possibilities to a few options. Ronald Fisher
Ronald Fisher
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS was an English statistician, evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and geneticist. Among other things, Fisher is well known for his contributions to statistics by creating Fisher's exact test and Fisher's equation...

’s statistically-designed experiments would then isolate the Red X, revealing potential interactions while confirming the identity of the Red X with statistical confidence.

John Tukey
John Tukey
John Wilder Tukey ForMemRS was an American statistician.- Biography :Tukey was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1915, and obtained a B.A. in 1936 and M.Sc. in 1937, in chemistry, from Brown University, before moving to Princeton University where he received a Ph.D...

, a proponent of simple statistical techniques, was another influence of Shainin’s. As a result of Tukey’s work, Shainin developed a simple confirmation test known as a “Six Pack Test.” Six Pack Tests were known for being much simpler than t-tests, being non-parametric and having a basic rule set. Shainin further developed this work into an analysis of variance, or ANOVA, permitting non-parametric analysis of Fisher’s full factorial experiment
Factorial experiment
In statistics, a full factorial experiment is an experiment whose design consists of two or more factors, each with discrete possible values or "levels", and whose experimental units take on all possible combinations of these levels across all such factors. A full factorial design may also be...

s.

Like Seder’s Multi-Vari charts, Waloddi Weibull
Waloddi Weibull
Ernst Hjalmar Waloddi Weibull was a Swedish engineer, scientist, and mathematician.Weibull came from a family that had strong ties to Scania...

’s now famous continuous probability distribution fascinated Shainin. Weibull’s distribution, along with Shainin’s experiences at Hamilton Standard, planted the seed that would eventually become Shainin’s system for product reliability. This system was used in the development of Grumman’s Lunar Module as well as General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...

’ initial production of their anti-lock (ABS) brake system.

NASA/Apollo 13

During the 1960s Shainin worked for Grumman Aerospace as a reliability consultant for NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

's Apollo Lunar Module
Apollo Lunar Module
The Apollo Lunar Module was the lander portion of the Apollo spacecraft built for the US Apollo program by Grumman to carry a crew of two from lunar orbit to the surface and back...

. In order to ensure a statistical margin of safety, Shainin developed a completely new approach to reliability assessment, which was applied to the empirical testing of Grumman's Lunar Module prototype components and systems.
Shainin’s approach to reliability testing was crucial to Grumman’s bid in the development of the Lunar Module. The effectiveness of his approach was demonstrated by zero failures in eleven manned missions, six of which featured moon landings. When the command module became uninhabitable during the failed Apollo 13
Apollo 13
Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The craft was launched on April 11, 1970, at 13:13 CST. The landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days later, crippling the service module upon which the Command...

 mission, the Lunar Module became the lifeboat that brought the Apollo 13 astronauts to lunar orbit and back to Earth.

During the years that Shainin served as a reliability consultant for Pratt & Whitney
Pratt & Whitney
Pratt & Whitney is a U.S.-based aerospace manufacturer with global service operations. It is a subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation . Pratt & Whitney's aircraft engines are widely used in both civil aviation and military aviation. Its headquarters are in East Hartford, Connecticut, USA...

 Aircraft, he worked on the hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell that powered Apollo environmental life support in addition to the RL-10
RL-10
The RL10 was USA's first liquid hydrogen fueled rocket engine. An updated version is used in several current launch vehicles. Six RL10 engines were used in the S-IV second stage of the Saturn I rocket. One or two RL10 engines are used in the Centaur upper stages of Atlas and Titan rockets...

 cryogenic liquid rocket engine. The RL-10 soon became America's most reliable space engine, at one point logging 128 ignitions in space without a single failure.

Further contributions

For 38 years Shainin served as statistical consultant on the medical staff at the Newington Children’s Hospital in Connecticut. Here, Shainin was able to adapt his techniques to the problems surrounding the etiology
Etiology
Etiology is the study of causation, or origination. The word is derived from the Greek , aitiologia, "giving a reason for" ....

 of infirmities, specifically amongst disabled children.

From 1950 to 1983 Shainin was on the faculty of the University of Connecticut
University of Connecticut
The admission rate to the University of Connecticut is about 50% and has been steadily decreasing, with about 28,000 prospective students applying for admission to the freshman class in recent years. Approximately 40,000 prospective students tour the main campus in Storrs annually...

, where he originated and conducted the continuing education program for people in industry.

In 1987 Shainin further refined his problem prevention approach through his assistance with the introduction of the Detroit Diesel Series 60 engine. Shainin’s “Overstress Probe Testing” techniques exposed design weaknesses early in the development process of the engine, which enabled improvements to be made before the final design.

Bob Galvin
Bob Galvin
Robert William "Bob" Galvin was a US executive. He was the son of the founder of Motorola, Paul Galvin, and served as the CEO of Motorola from 1959 to 1986.-Motorola career:...

 was assisted by Shainin in his effort to improve quality at Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...

 during the 1980s. As a result of Galvin’s work, Motorola received the first Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recognizes U.S. organizations in the business, health care, education, and nonprofit sectors for performance excellence. The Baldrige Award is the only formal recognition of the performance excellence of both public and private U.S. organizations given by...

 in 1989.

Having served for many years on the editorial and technical advisory board of Quality, the Hitchcock journal published by the American Broadcasting Company
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

, Shainin was also appointed to the editorial board of Quality Engineering
Quality Engineering
Quality Engineering is a quarterly academic journal focusing on quality control and quality assurance management through use of physical technology, standards information, and statistical tools. The journal is co-published between American Society for Quality and Marcel Dekker, Inc....

, the journal for the American Society for Quality
American Society for Quality
American Society for Quality , formerly known as American Society for Quality Control , is a knowledge-based global community of quality control experts, with nearly 85,000 members dedicated to the promotion and advancement of quality tools, principles, and practices in their workplaces and in...

 (ASQ).

Shainin is the author or co-author of eight books, including “Managing Manpower in the Industrial Environment”(Wm. C. Brown Co.), “Tool Engineers Handbook” (McGraw-Hill), “Industrial Engineering Handbook” (McGraw-Hill), “Quality Control Handbook” (McGraw-Hill), “New Decision-Making Tools for Managers” (Harvard University Press), “Manufacturing, Planning, and Estimating Handbook” (McGraw-Hill), and “Statistics In Action.”

Awards and honors

In 1952 Shainin, a Fellow of the American Society for Quality
American Society for Quality
American Society for Quality , formerly known as American Society for Quality Control , is a knowledge-based global community of quality control experts, with nearly 85,000 members dedicated to the promotion and advancement of quality tools, principles, and practices in their workplaces and in...

, received the ASQ Brumbaugh Award–honoring the best contribution to industry for that year–in response to his paper, “The Lot Plot Plan.” Shainin also received the ASQ Edwards Medal for “best contribution to the management of quality control” for the year 1970. In 1982 he received the ASQ Eugene L. Grant Award for his educational programs. Shainin also received the ASQ's Shewart Medal, becoming the first person to win all four of these prestigious ASQ medals. The Institute of Management Consultants designated Shainin as a Certified Management Consultant, and the American Arbitration Association
American Arbitration Association
The American Arbitration Association is a private enterprise in the business of arbitration, and one of several arbitration organizations that administers arbitration proceedings. The AAA also administers mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution. It is headquartered in New York...

 appointed him to the Panel of Arbitrators. Shainin was additionally elected “Academician” by the International Academy for Quality, and in 1996 ASQ made Shainin its 15th honorary member. Shainin was finally honored by the ASQ with the creation of the Dorian Shainin Medal in 2004.

Quotes


“My particular technique is to say to people, ‘Let’s stop guessing. Instead, let’s find clues–sources of knowledge that you just would not have otherwise.’”

–Dorian Shainin



“Talk to the parts; they are smarter than the engineers.”
–Dorian Shainin

Shainin Tool Development Highlights
1946 Lot Plot (Shainin)
1948 Reliability Service Monitoring (Shainin)
1952 Precontrol (Shainin/Purcell/Carter/Satterthwaite)
1956 Component Search (Shainin)
Circa 1958 Operation Search (Shainin)
Circa 1960 Tolerance Parallelogram (Shainin)
1964 Overstress Testing (Shainin)
1968 B vs C (Shainin)
1971 Paired Comparisons (Shainin)
1972 Isoplot (Shainin/Pollard)
1973 Variable Search (Shainin)
1976 Randomized Sequencing (Shainin)
circa 1976 Resistant Limit Transform (Shainin)
1977 Rank Order ANOVA (Shainin)
1988 Shainin System for Quality Improvement (Shainin)

Print

  • Acheson, J. Duncan, Quality Control and Industrial Statistics, 5th ed., Homewood, Ill., Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1986.
  • American men & women of science: physical and biological sciences, Bowker, 1986,p. 643, ISBN 0835222284
  • American Society of Tool Manufacturing Engineers/Shainin, Dorian (contributor), Tool Engineers Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1949.
  • American Statistical Association (ASA), Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, 1954, p. 341
  • Bhote, Keki, The Power of Ultimate Six SIGMA, Amacom, New York, 2003, p. 15, ISBN 0814407595
  • Bhote, Keki, The Ultimate Six Sigma: Beyond Quality Excellence to Total Business, Amacom, New York, 2001, p. 176, ISBN 0814406777
  • Bhote, Keki, World Class Quality: Using Design of Experiments to Make It Happen, 2nd edition, 2000, Amacom, New York, pp. 79–82, 94-99 ISBN 0814404278
  • Bursk, John F. and Chapman, Edward C., New Decision-Making Tools for Managers; Mathematical Programming as an Aid in the Solving of Business Problems, Harvard University Press, 1968.
  • Carter, A.D.S., Mechanical Reliability, Wiley, 1986, pp. 156–157, ISBN 0470206942
  • Cowden, Dudley Johnstone, Statistical Methods in Quality Control, Prentice-Hall, 1957, pp. 621–624
  • Debing, Lawrence M., Quality Control for Plastics Engineers, Reinhold Publishing Co., 1957.
  • Grant, Eugene Lodewick, Leavenworth, Richard S., Statistical Quality Control, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1988, pp. 444, 574-575, ISBN 0070241171
  • Ingle, Sud, In Search of Perfection: How to Create/maintain/improve Quality, Prentice-Hall, 1985, p. 47, ISBN 0134675568
  • Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE transactions on industry and general applications, IEEE, 1965, p. 87
  • IPC Business Press, Quality Today: Measurement & Inspection Technology, IPC Industrial Press, 1994, p. 25
  • Juran, J.M., Editor, Quality Control Handbook, First Edition, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1951, pp. 37–41.
  • Rath & Strong, Rath & Strong's Six Sigma Leadership Handbook, Wiley, 1st edition, 2003, p. 2., ISBN 0471251240
  • Rath & Strong, Rath & Strong's Six Sigma Pocket Guide: New Revised Edition, Rath & Strong, Incorporated, Aon Consulting, 2006, p. 10, ISBN 0974632872
  • Shainin, Dorian, Reliability: Managing a reliability program. "Apollo lunar module engine exhaust products." Science 166, 1969, pp. 733–38.
  • Shainin, Dorian (contributing editor), Manufacturing, Planning, and Estimating Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1963, ISBN 0070015368
  • Shainin, Dorian, Shainin, Pete, "Better Than Taguchi Orthogonal Tables," Quality and Reliability Engineering International, 1988, p. 4.
  • Shainin, Dorian, Shainin, Pete, "Pre-control Versus X & R Charting: Continuous or Immediate Quality Improvement?," Quality Engineering, 1989, p. 419-429.
  • Shainin, Dorian, Shainin, Pete, "Statistical Process Control," in Quality Control Handbook, ed. J.M. Juran and F.M. Gryna, McGraw-Hill,1988, section 24.
  • Sleeper, Andrew D., Design for Six Sigma Statistics, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 2005, p. 79, ISBN 0071451625
  • Stamatis, D. H., TQM Engineering Handbook, CRC Press, 1997, pp. 240–241 ISBN 082470083X
  • Stephens, Kenneth S., Juran, Quality, and a Century of Improvement, American Society for Quality, 2004, p. 188, ISBN 0873896351
  • Toedt, Theodore A. and Shainin, Dorian (contributing editor), Managing Manpower in the Industrial Environment, W.C. Brown Co., 1962.
  • Traver, Robert W., Manufacturing Solutions For Consistent Quality and Reliability, 1995, Amacom, New York, p. 7, ISBN 0814402712.

Web


Periodicals

  • ASQ, Spring, 2000, "Shainin Stamp of Quality", p. 9.
  • Main, Jeremy, Langan, Patricia A., August 18, 1986, "Under the Spell of the Quality Gurus" Fortune Magazine, pp. 22–23.
  • Logothetis, N., 1990, "A Perspective on Shainin’s Approach to Experimental Design for Quality Improvement", Quality and Reliability Engineering International, p. 6, 195-202.
  • Priddle, Alisa, 2003, "Dean of Lean Chrysler’s LaSorda starts to leave his mark", WARD’S AutoWorld, May 2003, pp. 32–34.
  • Quality, September, 1982, "A talk with Dorian", pp. 15–18.
  • Schultz, William, 1992, "Statistical Engineering", Quality, August, 1992, p. 18.

Other Sources

  • Shainin, Dorian, Shainin, Pete, "Analysis of Experiments," 45th Annual Quality Congress Proceedings, ASQC, 1990, p. 1071-1077.


External links

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