Case History: Graphical Methods for Monitoring Profile Panel Performance

Descriptive profiling is used extensively by sensory scientists in industry because it provides a technique that both describes and measures the differences and similarities between products. The results of these measurements make an important contribution to decisions affecting all aspects of product management, research, development, production, and marketing. So it is important to be able to confirm the reliability of the descriptive profiling method by running periodic checks on the performance of the assessors who make up the profile panel. Unfortunately, many of the available methods for checking performance are quite complex and depend upon having replicate assessments.