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Box Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Industrial Statistics

The Box Medal is named after George Box and recognises each year an extraordinary statistician who has remarkably contributed with his/her work to the development and the application of statistical methods in European business and industry.

ENBIS members can nominate statisticians who influenced the applications of Statistics in European business and industry, regardless of their ENBIS affiliation.

No supporting document is required since the Box Medal recipient should be a well known statistician.

The Box Medal recipient will be invited to the ENBIS annual conference where he/she

  • will deliver an invited lecture;
  • will receive the George Box Medal;
  • will be fully reimbursed for his/her travel and stay.

Should the recipient be unable to attend the conference, then the ENBIS President would decide when and where the award should be presented to him/her.

Letter from George Box

During the conference in Barcelona, prof. George Box was the first recipient of the Box Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Industrial Statistics. In view of his health, prof. Box was unfortunately not able to attend the conference. He wrote the following letter, which was read before the conference delegates.

"If I ever had doubts about what was meant by mixed emotions, those doubts have been set to rest today. I feel extremely sad at not being able to accept your generous invitation to be here in person.

But also I feel greatly honored that ENBIS is instituting an award in my name to be given for outstanding contributions to business and industrial statistics. Most of all I have been delighted with your new society. I have watched with interest it beginnings, it's coming to fruition and it's present healthy state.

I know that to achieve this must have been difficult and sometimes frustrating. But due to the energy, enterprise and imagination of such people as Ronald Does, Dave Stewardson, Soren Bisgaard, Henry Wynn and Bo Bergman you have produced an entity that is unique.

At last we see the coming of age of industrial statistics. I can remember the time when to be a statistical consultant was extremely frustrating.

Although there were a number of enthusiasts - engineers, chemists and business associates who made remarkable progress in the solution of many problems using statistical techniques, higher management had little or no interest in such matters.

It was the Japanese two or three decades ago that, at last, devastated this complacency of higher management. When in desperation Dr. Deming was called in to help the automobile industry, he refused to talk to anyone but the CEO's and their associates. He was very severe with them. This was the beginning of a sea change in many industries in Europe and the United States in the way that management viewed our subject.

Another harbinger of things to come was when in a local factory, Motorola gave up trying to manufacture TV sets because of the poor quality of the labor available. My late colleague Bill Hunter took his class to see how the factory was doing under new management using quality methods. At first, the defect rate of TVs going through the line had been 130% - that is to say that every set came off the line once to be individually fixed and that some had to be fixed twice.

Hanging from the ceiling, when we visited, was a huge graph showing the progress that they had made. In two or three years they had reduced the defect rate from 130% to 3%. The people in the production lines were the same workers that had been there before and so were most of the managers.

We talked to them individually and they told us how much happier they were with the new quality systems and participatory management. I think it was then that Motorola got religion and became one of the founders of the six-sigma movement.

I have one concern. I think you must be vigilant that your society remains one that is interested in the solution real problems.

What has often happened in the US is that sections of societies and journals that were initially concerned with the solution of real problems gradually became more and more mathematical. This was because the only necessary qualification there for teaching statistics was a degree in mathematics.

Statistics is a catalyst for science. But in many ways mathematical thinking and scientific thinking are in some ways antithetical. I believe that you can can never know too much mathematics but I also believe that the more you think only like a mathematician, the more difficult it will for you to be to be a good scientific statistician.

In addition to toasting to the continuing success of ENBIS, Claire and I raise our glasses to many dear friends attending the conference. We remember with great fondness our past celebrations in Catalunya and España.

Best wishes, George Box"

George Box Lecture 2004

Professor Søren Bisgaard is the 2004 recipient of the George Box Medal for outstanding contribution to industrial statistics. At the Copenhagen Conference, he delivered the 2004 George Box Lecture. Below is the abstract of this lecture.

ENBIS and the Importance of Practice in the Development of Statistics

Søren Bisgaard
University of Massachusetts Amherst and
Institute for Business and Industrial Statistics, University of Amsterdam

A primary stimulus for innovations in statistical theory comes from challenging applications. Historically, major and minor statistical theory developments have occurred in direct response to the demand for solutions to important practical problems. In this regard statistics is similar to other applied sciences such as medicine; challenging problems stimulate the development of new procedures, methods and theory. A key motivation for the establishment of ENBIS was the desire to create a vehicle that would stimulate positive and productive interactions between statistical practitioners and researchers throughout Europe and beyond. We will in this talk discuss a number of challenging problems that have or are expected to stimulate useful theoretical developments. (Note that the title is a variation of a theme expounded by George Box, 1984.) A secondary theme of this talk will be an explanation of the view that quality (TQM, Six Sigma, etc.), the major focus of industrial statistics in the past decade, is not just about quality ? variance and defect reduction ? but about innovation as more broadly defined by economists. Product and process innovation, typically considered a mysterious haphazard process, can with the aid of statistics and quality management principles be converted into a systematic and planned process of fundamental importance for the economic future of industrialized nations. But product and process innovations and the challenging problems they pose, will require as well as stimulate novel statistical innovations for which ENBIS can serve as marketplace for ideas and solutions.