may need to take a measurement that is not automatically made otherwise the information is input to the input form 22 and submitted to the data collection system 10 with the other desired information such as by pressing a button within the form to enter the data once the information has been input it is preferably either accessible to or automatically submitted to a statistical process control application 70 as indicated by transaction 106 the statistical process control application 70 is in one embodiment a dedicated statistical engine which is proprietary to the data collection system 10 or is alternately a statistical engine that is selected as desired from a library of such by the engineer 50 however in the most preferred embodiment the statistical process control application 70 is the main statistical engine for the facility in which the data collection system 10 is implemented thus it is most preferred that the data be submitted automatically to the statistical engine 70 so that it can produce output forms 24 from the data such as statistical process control charts and other such reporting mechanisms as given in transaction 112 thus the input data is preferably routed to the appropriate output forms 24 if the data indicates that there is some type of problem such as if a.