Care And Feeding Of Checkweighers

摘要

Many years ago, during a tour of a production facility where packages of customer goods were being filled, a statistician colleague and I (Lynne Hare) stood transfixed by an end-of-line checkweigher. There was a red light on above a label that read, "Needs rezero." That didn't seem to bother anyone.rnWe watched as package after package progressed over the checkweigher's scale, some of them being kicked off into a bin by a pneumatic device. Then we weighed a large number of packages from the bin and found almost all of them were above the label-declared weight. Only a very few were actually below the label declaration by more than the law would allow.1rnWhen no one else was around, my colleague announced he could do an excellent imitation of the checkweigher.