With great pleasure we introduce this Special Issue of Quality and Reliability Engineering International which is dedicated to the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS). ENBIS is a forum for the development and improvement of statistical methods and their dissemination and application to the European business and industry.

This Special Issue includes 16 articles mostly from presentations made during the 19th Annual Conference which was held in Budapest from 2 to 4 September 2019, with Rossella Berni (Department of Statistics, Information Science, Applications of the University of Florence) as Chair of the Programme Committee, and András Zempléni (Department of Probability Theory and Statistics, Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest) as Chair of the Local organizing Committee. Besides, the Special issue also features articles from supporters of ENBIS.

During ENBIS‐19, Ronald J.M.M. Does (Department of Operations Management of the University of Amsterdam) received the Box Medal Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the development and the application of statistical methods in business and industry. Rebecca Killick, Senior Lecturer in Statistics at Lancaster University, received the Young Statistician Award to recognize the work of young people in introducing innovative methods, promoting the use of statistics and/or successfully using it in the daily practice. Finally, Eugene Tuv (Senior Principal Research Scientist at Intel) was the recipient of the 2019 Best Manager Award, which is meant to recognize managers who gave a significant contribution to the success of their companies by advancing the spread and the practice of statistics in them.

The 16 papers that make up this Special Edition demonstrate that statistical methodology should be driven by real practical problems – being the exact spirit of ENBIS. In this number, Does et al. provide an extensive review and discussion about the design of control charts when parameters are estimated.

Several authors describe methods that are used in quality, reliability and design of experiments and bring them closer to the practitioner, either by suggesting original improvements, or making it clear what method is best in any given situation. Dror introduces a method, based on Quality Function Deployment, for the selection of testing to be made during new product development to meet the essential quality requirements, expressed as failure rates, without compromising business objectives. Marmor and Bashkansky present an overview of metrics for the many different types of data that arise in quality engineering. The choice of the metrics affects the computation of essential quantities such as similarity between measurements, assignment to a class, data aggregation and dispersion measures. Andrade et al. address inference on reliability as defined by the comparison of a stress and a strength measurement, including a new nonparametric copula method and a study of robustness with respect to model misspecifications. Chapman and Killick present a comparison of the two main approaches to change‐point detection with an application to software engineering. Borgoni and Zappa discuss process capability indices as a tool for the quality evaluation of key product parameters and present an inference method for PCIs on a planar artifact including nonconstant variance, with application to semiconductor manufacturing. Rizzo et. al discuss appropriate performance metrics for control charts in general and for TBE control charts with attention to connecting the mathematical theory behind the choice of the metrics and the needs of the practitioners. Grima et al. present an approach for selecting relevant effects in factorial designs by fixing an effect value that is considered large enough to control the probability of it going unnoticed and a plot to visualize the results obtained. Mylona and Otava focus on communicating statistical conclusions of experiments to scientists through a factor scaling approach. Sahki et al. present a performance study of change‐point detection thresholds in a sequential context. Capaci et al. illustrate how step and ramp disturbances manifest themselves in a single‐input–single‐output systems by studying their resulting signatures in the framework of statistical and engineering process control where controlled and manipulated variables are present.

The remaining authors have proposed original methods for specific applications. Kirkhhoff et al. develop an edge detection method in images of a spraying process, which saves manual work and is a prerequisite for the assessment of the quality of the coating. Hijazy and Zempléni introduce an optimal inspection method for a degradation process driven by a gamma process. Somnez and Pintelon perform a survey on performance management of operating rooms and propose a new KPI. Giudici and Abu Hashish write about a hidden Markov model for detecting changepoints in cryptoasset markets. Finally, Palumbo et al. propose the use of function‐on‐function linear regression in the framework of functional data analysis based on a finite dimensional approximation of the regression coefficient function in terms of two sets of basis functions, as well as on two roughness penalties that control the degree of smoothness of the final estimator.

We warmly thank the authors for contributing carefully written papers and the reviewers for contributing their time and knowledge. We also hope you will enjoy reading these papers and hope they might encourage you to participate in the vibrant ENBIS community. More information about ENBIS can be found at www.enbis.org.

Lastly, we are also thankful to Quality and Reliability Engineering International for being a long‐time partner of ENBIS and for publishing a special ENBIS issue every year.

我们非常高兴地介绍国际质量和可靠性工程专刊，该专刊致力于欧洲工商统计网络（ENBIS）。ENBIS是发展和改进统计方法及其在欧洲商业和工业中的传播和应用的论坛。

本期特刊包括16篇文章，主要来自2019年9月2日至4日在布达佩斯举行的第19届年会期间的演讲，该节目的主持人是Rossella Berni（佛罗伦萨大学统计，信息科学和应用系）委员会，AndrásZempléni（布达佩斯EötvösLoránd大学概率论与统计系）担任地方组织委员会主席。此外，特刊还刊登了ENBIS支持者的文章。

在ENBIS-19期间，Ronald JMM Dos（阿姆斯特丹大学运营管理系）获得了Box奖章奖，以表彰他对统计方法在商业和工业中的发展和应用做出的杰出贡献。兰开斯特大学统计学高级讲师丽贝卡·基里克（Rebecca Killick）获得了青年统计学家奖，以表彰年轻人在引入创新方法，促进统计学的使用和/或在日常实践中成功使用统计学方面的工作。最后，尤金·图夫（Eugene Tuv）（英特尔公司高级首席研究科学家）获得了2019年最佳经理人奖，该奖项旨在表彰那些通过促进公司的传播和统计实践为公司成功做出重大贡献的经理人。

组成此特刊的16篇论文表明，统计方法应由实际的实际问题驱动，这是ENBIS的确切精神。在这个数字中，Does等人。估计参数时，将对控制图的设计进行广泛的审查和讨论。

几位作者描述了用于质量，可靠性和实验设计的方法，并通过建议原始改进或弄清楚哪种方法在任何给定情况下都是最佳方法，使它们与实践者更加接近。Dror引入了一种基于质量功能部署的方法，用于选择要在新产品开发过程中进行的测试，以满足基本的质量要求（表示为失败率），而不会损害业务目标。马尔莫和巴什坎斯基概述质量工程中出现的许多不同类型数据的度量标准。度量的选择会影响基本数量的计算，例如度量之间的相似性，类别的分配，数据聚合和分散度量。安德拉德等。解决了通过对应力和强度测量进行比较而定义的可靠性推断，包括一种新的非参数copula方法以及对模型错误指定的鲁棒性研究。Chapman和Killick将两种主要的变更点检测方法与软件工程应用程序进行了比较。博尔戈尼和扎帕讨论了将过程能力指数用作关键产品参数质量评估的工具，并提出了在平面工件上（包括非恒定变化）的PCI推理方法，并将其应用于半导体制造。里佐（Rizzo）等 他等人讨论了一般控制图和TBE控制图的适当性能指标，并着重于将数学理论与指标选择和从业人员需求联系起来。Grima等。提出了一种通过固定影响值来选择因子设计中相关影响的方法，该影响值应足够大以控制其不被注意的可能性，并绘制图表以可视化获得的结果。Mylona和Otava专注于通过因子缩放方法将实验的统计结论传达给科学家。Sahki等。在顺序环境中对变更点检测阈值进行性能研究。Capaci等。通过在统计和工程过程控制框架中研究存在的受控变量和可操纵变量的结果，说明阶跃和斜坡扰动如何在单输入单输出系统中表现出来。

其余作者针对特定应用提出了原始方法。Kirkhhoff等。开发一种在喷涂过程图像中的边缘检测方法，可节省人工工作，并且是评估涂层质量的前提。Hijazy和Zempléni提出了一种针对由伽马过程驱动的降解过程的最佳检查方法。Somnez和Pintelon对手术室的绩效管理进行了调查，并提出了新的KPI。Giudici和Abu Hashish撰写了一个用于检测加密资产市场变化点的隐马尔可夫模型。最后，Palumbo等。提议在功能数据分析的框架中使用函数对函数线性回归，该回归基于两套基函数以及两个控制度数的粗糙度惩罚的回归系数函数的有限维近似最终估计量的平滑度。

我们热烈感谢作者精心撰写论文，以及审稿人贡献自己的时间和知识。我们也希望您会喜欢阅读这些论文，并希望它们会鼓励您加入充满活力的ENBIS社区。有关ENBIS的更多信息，请访问www.enbis.org。

最后，我们还要感谢国际质量与可靠性工程组织（International and Reliability Engineering International）作为ENBIS的长期合作伙伴，并感谢您每年出版一期特殊的ENBIS期刊。