Interactive data analysis in a manufacturing setting - A case study

We present a case study in the application of interactive data analysis in the context of semiconductors and optical fiber manufacturing. Our approach to interactive graphics is based on well-known principles of data analysis and interactive graphics (Chambers, Cleveland, Kleiner & Tukey 1983, Cleveland 1993, Tufte 1983, Tufte 1990, Stuetzle 1987, Becker, Cleveland & Well 1988b, Becker, Eick & Wilks 1991, Young & Lubinsky 1995, Buja, Cook & Swayne 1996), and its implementation is written in the S-language for data analysis and graphics (Becker, Chambers & Wilks 1988a, Chambers & Hastie 1992). The case study also highlights the need for improved interactive software tools in S-based systems to support the type of programmable interactive graphics that we envision. These limitations have motivated us to explore some recent developments in software technology, such as S Version 4 (Chambers 1998), Java, LispStat (Tierney 1996), XploRe (Haerdle, Klinke, Turlach & Ardle 1995), CORBA (Siegel 1996), and PVM (Geist, Beguelin, Dongarra, Jiang, Mancheck & Sunderam 1994), and asses how they can be used to alleviate some of the deficiencies we see in existing tools.