  We explore the concept of parameter design applied to the production of glass
beads in the manufacture of metal-encapsulated transistors. The main motivation
is to complete the analysis hinted at in the original publication by Jim
Morrison in 1957, which was an early example of discussing the idea of
transmitted variation in engineering design, and an influential paper in the
development of analytic parameter design as a data-centric engineering
activity. Parameter design is a secondary design activity focussed on selecting
the nominals of the design variables, to simultaneously achieve the required
functional output, with minimum variance.
