A New Synthetic Exponentially Weighted Moving Average Control Chart for Monitoring Process Dispersion

Exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts have been widely recognized as a potentially powerful process monitoring tool of the statistical process control because of their excellent speed in detecting small to moderate shifts in the process parameters. Recently, new EWMA and synthetic control charts have been proposed based on the best linear unbiased estimator of the scale parameter using ordered ranked set sampling (ORSS) scheme, named EWMA‐ORSS and synthetic‐ORSS charts, respectively. In this paper, we extend the work and propose a new synthetic EWMA (SynEWMA) control chart for monitoring the process dispersion using ORSS, named SynEWMA‐ORSS chart. The SynEWMA‐ORSS chart is an integration of the EWMA‐ORSS chart and the conforming run length chart. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations are used to estimate the run length performances of the proposed control chart. A comprehensive comparison of the run length performances of the proposed and the existing powerful control charts reveals that the SynEWMA‐ORSS chart outperforms the synthetic‐R, synthetic‐S, synthetic‐D, synthetic‐ORSS, CUSUM‐R, CUSUM‐S, CUSUM‐ln S², EWMA‐ln S² and EWMA‐ORSS charts when detecting small shifts in the process dispersion. A similar trend is observed when the proposed control chart is constructed under imperfect rankings. An application to a real data is also provided to demonstrate the implementation and application of the proposed control chart. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CCC‐r charts' performance with estimated parameter for high‐quality process

CCC‐r charts are effective in detecting process shifts in the nonconforming rate especially for a high‐quality process. The implementation of the CCC‐r charts is usually under the assumption that the in‐control nonconforming rate is known. However, the nonconforming rate is never known, and accurate estimation is difficult. We investigate the effect of estimation error on the CCC‐r charts' performances through the expected value of the average number of observations to signal (EANOS) as well as the standard deviation of the average number of observations to signal (SDANOS). By comparing the in‐control performance of the CCC‐r charts, the CCC‐r chart with a larger value of r is more susceptible to the effects of parameter estimation. Meanwhile, the performance of the CCC‐r charts can converge when detecting upward shifts in p of out‐of‐control processes. We recommend the use of the CCC‐4 chart when considering its effectiveness in detecting shifts as well as its easier construction in practice. Furthermore, it is investigated that the CCC‐4 chart is less sensitive to parameter estimation while being more effective in detecting different process shifts when compared with Geometric CUSUM chart and synthetic chart.     

Novel design of composite generally weighted moving average and cumulative sum charts

The cumulative sum (CUSUM) and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) charts are popular statistical tools to improve the performance of the Shewhart chart in detecting small process shifts. In this study, we propose the mixed generally weighted moving average (GWMA)‐CUSUM chart and its reverse‐order CUSUM‐GWMA chart to enhance detection ability compared with existing counterparts. The simulation revealed that the mixed GWMA‐CUSUM and mixed CUSUM‐GWMA charts have the sensitivity to detect small process shifts and efficient structures compared with the mixed EWMA‐CUSUM and mixed CUSUM‐EWMA charts, respectively. Moreover, the mixed GWMA‐CUSUM chart with a large design parameter has robust performance, regardless of the high tail t distribution or right skewness gamma distribution.     

Increasing the Sensitivity of Cumulative Sum Charts for Location

The cumulative sum (CUSUM) chart is a very effective control charting procedure used for the quick detection of small‐sized and moderate‐sized changes. It can detect small process shifts missed by the Shewhart‐type control chart, which is sensitive mainly to large shifts. To further enhance the sensitivity of the CUSUM control chart at detecting very small process disturbances, this article presents CUSUM control charts based on well‐structured sampling procedures, double ranked set sampling, median‐double ranked set sampling, and double‐median ranked set sampling. These sampling techniques significantly improve the overall performance of the CUSUM chart over the entire process mean shift range, without increasing the false alarm rate. The newly developed control schemes do not only dominate most of the existing charts but are also easy to design and implement as illustrated through an application example of real datasets. The control schemes used for comparison in this study include the conventional CUSUM chart, a fast initial response CUSUM chart, a 2‐CUSUM chart, a 3‐CUSUM chart, a runs rules‐based CUSUM chart, the enhanced adaptive CUSUM chart, the CUSUM chart based on ranked set sampling (RSS), and the single CUSUM and combined Shewhart–CUSUM charts based on median RSS. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mixed Exponentially Weighted Moving Average–Cumulative Sum Charts for Process Monitoring

The control chart is a very popular tool of statistical process control. It is used to determine the existence of special cause variation to remove it so that the process may be brought in statistical control. Shewhart‐type control charts are sensitive for large disturbances in the process, whereas cumulative sum (CUSUM)–type and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA)–type control charts are intended to spot small and moderate disturbances. In this article, we proposed a mixed EWMA–CUSUM control chart for detecting a shift in the process mean and evaluated its average run lengths. Comparisons of the proposed control chart were made with some representative control charts including the classical CUSUM, classical EWMA, fast initial response CUSUM, fast initial response EWMA, adaptive CUSUM with EWMA‐based shift estimator, weighted CUSUM and runs rules–based CUSUM and EWMA. The comparisons revealed that mixing the two charts makes the proposed scheme even more sensitive to the small shifts in the process mean than the other schemes designed for detecting small shifts. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Memory‐Type Control Charts for Monitoring the Process Dispersion

Control charts have been broadly used for monitoring the process mean and dispersion. Cumulative sum (CUSUM) and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts are memory control charts as they utilize the past information in setting up the control structure. This makes CUSUM and EWMA‐type charts good at detecting small disturbances in the process. This article proposes two new memory control charts for monitoring process dispersion, named as floating T ? S² and floating U ? S² control charts, respectively. The average run length (ARL) performance of the proposed charts is evaluated through a simulation study and is also compared with the CUSUM and EWMA charts for process dispersion. It is found that the proposed charts are better in detecting both positive as well as negative shifts. An additional comparison shows that the floating U ? S² chart has slightly smaller ARLs for larger shifts, while for smaller shifts, the floating T ? S² chart has better performance. An example is also provided which shows the application of the proposed charts on simulated datasets. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Progressive Mean Control Chart for Monitoring Process Location Parameter

Control charts are widely used for process monitoring. They show whether the variation is due to common causes or whether some of the variation is due to special causes. To detect large shifts in the process, Shewhart‐type control charts are preferred. Cumulative sum (CUSUM) and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts are generally used to detect small and moderate shifts. Shewhart‐type control charts (without additional tests) use only current information to detect special causes, whereas CUSUM and EWMA control charts also use past information. In this article, we proposed a control chart called progressive mean (PM) control chart, in which a PM is used as a plotting statistic. The proposed chart is designed such that it uses not only the current information but also the past information. Therefore, the proposed chart is a natural competitor for the classical CUSUM, the classical EWMA and some recent modifications of these two charts. The conclusion of this article is that the performance of the proposed PM chart is superior to the compared ones for small and moderate shifts, and its performance for large shifts is better (in terms of the average run length). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A GLR control chart for monitoring a multinomial process

The problem of detecting changes in the parameter p in a Bernoulli process with two possible categories for each observation has been extensively investigated in the SPC literature, but there is much less work on detecting changes in the vector parameter p in a multinomial process where there are more than two categories. A few papers have considered the case in which the direction of the change in p is known, but there is almost no work for the important case in which the direction of the change is unknown and individual observations are obtained. This paper proposes a multinomial generalized likelihood ratio (MGLR) control chart based on a likelihood ratio statistic for monitoring p when individual observations are obtained and the direction and size of the change in p are unknown. A set of 2‐sided Bernoulli cumulative sum (CUSUM) charts is proposed as a reasonable competitor of the MGLR chart. It is shown that the MGLR chart has better overall performance than the set of 2‐sided Bernoulli CUSUM charts over a wide range of unknown shifts. Equations are presented for obtaining the control limit of the MGLR chart when there are three or four components in p .     

A New Combined Shewhart–Cumulative Sum S Chart for Monitoring Process Standard Deviation

The combined application of a Shewhart chart and cumulative sum (CUSUM) control chart is an effective tool for the detection of all sizes of process shifts as the scheme combines the advantages of a CUSUM at detecting small to moderate shifts and Shewhart for the quick detection of very large shifts. This article proposes new combined Shewhart–CUSUM S charts based on the extreme variations of ranked set sampling technique, for efficient monitoring of changes in the process dispersion. Using Monte Carlo simulations, the combined scheme is designed to minimize the average extra quadratic loss over the entire process shift domain. The results show that the combined Shewhart–CUSUM S charts uniformly outperform several other procedures for detecting increases and decreases in the process variability. Moreover, the proposed scheme can detect changes that are small enough to escape the Shewhart S chart or fairly large to escape detection by the CUSUM S chart. Numerical example is given to illustrate the practical application of the proposed scheme using real industrial data. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CUSUM charts for monitoring a zero‐inflated poisson process

A zero‐inflated Poisson (ZIP) process is different from a standard Poisson process in that it results in a greater number of zeros. It can be used to model defect counts in manufacturing processes with occasional occurrences of non‐conforming products. ZIP models have been developed assuming that random shocks occur independently with probability p, and the number of non‐conformities in a product subject to a random shock follows a Poisson distribution with parameter λ. In our paper, a control charting procedure using a combination of two cumulative sum (CUSUM) charts is proposed for monitoring increases in the two parameters of the ZIP process. Furthermore, we consider a single CUSUM chart for detecting simultaneous increases in the two parameters. Simulation results show that a ZIP‐Shewhart chart is insensitive to shifts in p and smaller shifts in λ in terms of the average number of observations to signal. Comparisons between the combined CUSUM method and the single CUSUM chart show that the latter's performance is worse when there are only increases in p, but better when there are only increases in λ or when both parameters increase. The combined CUSUM method, however, is much better than the single CUSUM chart when one parameter increases while the other decreases. Finally, we present a case study from the light‐emitting diode packaging industry. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Monitoring of zero-inflated Poisson processes with EWMA and DEWMA control charts

The zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) distribution is an extension of the ordinary Poisson distribution and is used to model count data with an excessive number of zeros. In ZIP models, it is assumed that random shocks occur with probability p, and upon the occurrence of random shock, the number of nonconformities in a product follows the Poisson distribution with parameter λ. In this article, we study in more detail the exponentially weighted moving average control chart based on the ZIP distribution (regarded as ZIP-EWMA) and we also propose a double EWMA chart with an upper time-varying control limit to monitor ZIP processes (regarded as ZIP-DEWMA chart). The two charts are studied to detect upward shifts not only in each parameter individually but also in both parameters simultaneously. The steady-state performance and the performance with estimated parameters are also investigated. The performance of the two charts has been evaluated in terms of the average and standard deviation of the run length, and compared with Shewhart-type and CUSUM schemes for ZIP distribution, it is shown that the proposed chart is very effective especially in detecting shifts in p when λ remains in control (IC) and in both parameters simultaneously. Finally, one real example is given to display the application of the ZIP charts on practitioners.     

A new adaptive EWMA control chart for monitoring the process dispersion

The exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA), cumulative sum (CUSUM), and adaptive EWMA (AEWMA) control charts have had wide popularity because of their excellent speed in tracking infrequent process shifts, which are expected to lie within certain ranges. In this paper, we propose a new AEWMA dispersion chart that may achieve better performance over a range of dispersion shifts. The idea is to first consider an unbiased estimator of the dispersion shift using the EWMA statistic, and then based on the magnitude of this shift, select an appropriate value of the smoothing parameter to design an EWMA chart, named the AEWMA chart. The run length characteristics of the AEWMA chart are computed with the help of extensive Monte Carlo simulations. The AEWMA chart is compared with some of the existing powerful competitor control charts. It turns out that the AEWMA chart performs substantially and uniformly better than the EWMA‐S², CUSUM‐S², existing AEWMA, and HHW‐EWMA charts when detecting different kinds of shifts in the process dispersion. Moreover, an example is also used to explain the working and implementation of the proposed AEWMA chart.     

New Synthetic Control Charts for Monitoring Process Mean and Process Dispersion

A statistical quality control chart is widely recognized as a potentially powerful tool that is frequently used in many manufacturing and service industries to monitor the quality of the product or manufacturing processes. In this paper, we propose new synthetic control charts for monitoring the process mean and the process dispersion. The proposed synthetic charts are based on ranked set sampling (RSS), median RSS (MRSS), and ordered RSS (ORSS) schemes, named synthetic‐RSS, synthetic‐MRSS, and synthetic‐ORSS charts, respectively. Average run lengths are used to evaluate the performances of the control charts. It is found that the synthetic‐RSS and synthetic‐MRSS mean charts perform uniformly better than the Shewhart mean chart based on simple random sampling (Shewhart‐SRS), synthetic‐SRS, double sampling‐SRS, Shewhart‐RSS, and Shewhart‐MRSS mean charts. The proposed synthetic charts generally outperform the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) chart based on SRS in the detection of large mean shifts. We also compare the performance of the synthetic‐ORSS dispersion chart with the existing powerful dispersion charts. It turns out that the synthetic‐ORSS chart also performs uniformly better than the Shewhart‐R, Shewhart‐S, synthetic‐R, synthetic‐S, synthetic‐D, cumulative sum (CUSUM) ln S², CUSUM‐R, CUSUM‐S, EWMA‐ln S², and change point CUSUM charts for detecting increases in the process dispersion. A similar trend is observed when the proposed synthetic charts are constructed under imperfect RSS schemes. Illustrative examples are used to demonstrate the implementation of the proposed synthetic charts. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using FIR to Improve CUSUM Charts for Monitoring Process Dispersion

Statistical process control deals with monitoring process to detect disturbances in the process. These disturbances may be from the process mean or variance. In this study, we propose some charts that are efficient for detecting early shifts in dispersion parameter, by applying the Fast Initial Response feature. Performance measures such as average run length, standard deviation of the run length, extra quadratic loss, relative average run length, and performance comparison index are used to compare the proposed charts with their existing counterparts, including the Shewhart R chart and the Shewhart S chart with and without warning lines. Others include the CUSUM R chart, the CUSUM S chart, the EWMA of ln S², the CUSUM of ln S², the P_σ CUSUM, the χ CUSUM, and the Change Point (CP) CUSUM charts. The proposed charts do not only detect early shifts in the process dispersion faster, but also have better overall performance than their existing counterparts. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhanced generally weighted moving average variance charts for monitoring process variance with individual observations

The generally weighted moving average variance (GWMAV) chart is effective in detecting increases in process variance when only individual observations are available. Recently, the combination of exponentially weighted moving average and cumulative sum (CUSUM) charts for the effective detection of small process shifts has emerged. Inspired by the features, we propose the mixed GWMAV-CUSUM chart and its reverse order CUSUM-GWMAV to enhance the detection ability of the GWMAV chart and compare with the existing counterparts. Numerical simulation revealed that the mixed GWMAV-CUSUM and mixed CUSUM-GWMAV charts are sensitive to small upward shifts in the process variance and efficient structures compared with their prototypes and their separate charts, that is, GWMAV and CUSUM charts. An industrial dataset was used to illustrate the application of the proposed mixed charts.     

Binomial CUSUM chart with curtailment

The binomial cumulative sum (CUSUM) chart has been widely used to monitor the fraction nonconforming (p) of a process. It is a powerful procedure for detecting small and moderate p shifts. This article proposes a binomial CUSUM control chart using curtailment technique (Curt_CUSUM chart in short). The new chart is able to improve the overall detection effectiveness while holding the false alarm rate at a specified level. The results of the comparative studies show that, on average, the Curt_CUSUM chart is more effective than the CUSUM chart without curtailment by 30%, in terms of Average Number of Defectives, under different circumstances. The Curt_CUSUM chart can be applied to a 100% inspection as well as a general random sampling inspection.     

Multivariate multiple sampling charts

A new multivariate statistical process control scheme, the Multivariate Multiple Sampling (MMS) control chart scheme, is proposed in this paper. A MMS chart is a multivariate extension of a double sampling X-bar control chart with at least two sampling stages. In the paper, a statistical design optimization procedure to design the MMS chart is presented and the performance of the MMS chart is investigated. The statistical efficiency in terms of average run length of the MMS chart is compared with that of the Hotelling chart both with and without variable sampling schemes, a multivariate CUMulative SUM (CUSUM) chart, and a multivariate Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) chart. The ability of the MMS chart to handle the worst-case scenario is also investigated and compared with that of the multivariate EWMA and CUSUM charts. The results of the investigation show that even with only two sampling stages, the MMS chart provides an improvement in efficiency in detecting small shifts over the Hotelling chart without variable sampling schemes. When the number of sampling stages is equal to two, the MMS chart is better in detecting large shifts and the multivariate EWMA and CUSUM charts are better in detecting relatively small shifts. As the number of sampling stages is increased beyond two, the improvement in sensitivity of the MMS chart in detecting the small shifts increases. When the number of sampling stages ≥3, the MMS chart begins to give a better performance than a Hotelling chart with a variable sampling scheme for small shifts and is also better than a multivariate EWMA chart for both small and large shifts. As the number of sampling stages ≥4, the MMS chart begins to give a better performance than a multivariate CUSUM chart for both small and large shifts. The results of the investigation also show that the MMS chart outperforms the multivariate EWMA and CUSUM charts in the worst-case scenario situation.     

Enhancing the performance of EWMA charts

Control charts are extensively used in processes and are very helpful in determining the special cause variations so that a timely action may be taken to eliminate them. One of the charting procedures is the Shewhart‐type control charts, which are used mainly to detect large shifts. Two alternatives to the Shewhart‐type control charts are the cumulative (CUSUM) control charts and the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts that are specially designed to detect small and moderately sustained changes in quality. Enhancing the ability of design structures of control charts is always desirable and one may do it in different ways. In this article, we propose two runs rules schemes to be applied on EWMA control charts and evaluate their performance in terms of the Average Run Length (ARL). Comparisons of the proposed schemes are made with some existing representative CUSUM and EWMA‐type counterparts used for small and moderate shifts, including the classical EWMA, the classical CUSUM, the fast initial response CUSUM and EWMA, the weighted CUSUM, the double CUSUM, the distribution‐free CUSUM and the runs rules schemes‐based CUSUM. The findings of the study reveal that the proposed schemes are able to perform better than all the other schemes under investigation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design and implementation of CUSUM exceedance control charts for unknown location

Nonparametric control charts provide a robust alternative in practice when the form of the underlying distribution is unknown. Nonparametric CUSUM (NPCUSUM) charts blend the advantages of a CUSUM with that of a nonparametric chart in detecting small to moderate shifts. In this paper, we examine efficient design and implementation of Phase II NPCUSUM charts based on exceedance (EX) statistics, called the NPCUSUM-EX chart. We investigate the choice of the order statistic from the reference (Phase I) sample that defines the exceedance statistic. We see that choices other than the median, such as the 75th percentile, can yield improved performance of the chart in certain situations. Furthermore, observing certain shortcomings of the average run-length, we use the median run-length as the performance metric. The NPCUSUM-EX chart is compared with the NPCUSUM-Rank chart based on the popular Wilcoxon rank-sum statistic. We also study the choice of the reference value, k, of the CUSUM charts. An illustration with real data is provided.     

A general approach to modeling CUSUM charts for a proportion

This paper considers two CUmulative SUM (CUSUM) charts for monitoring a process when items from the process are inspected and classified into one of two categories, namely defective or non-defective. The purpose of this type of process monitoring is to detect changes in the proportion p of items in the first category. The first CUSUM chart considered is based on the binomial variables resulting from counting the total number of defective items in samples of n items. A point is plotted on this binomial CUSUM chart after n items have been inspected. The second CUSUM chart considered is based on the Bernoulli observations corresponding to the inspection of the individual items in the samples. A point is plotted on this Bernoulli CUSUM chart after each individual inspection, without waiting until the end of a sample. The main objective of the paper is to evaluate the statistical properties of these two CUSUM charts under a general model for process sampling and for the occurrence of special causes that change the value of p. This model applies to situations in which there are inspection periods when n items are inspected and non-inspection periods when no inspection is done. This model assumes that there is a positive time between individual inspection results, and that a change in p can occur anywhere within an inspection period or a non-inspection period. This includes the possibility that a shift can occur during the time that a sample of n items is being taken. This model is more general and often more realistic than the simpler model usually used to evaluate properties of control charts. Under our model, it is shown that there is little difference between the binomial CUSUM chart and the Bernoulli CUSUM chart, in terms of the expected time required to detect small and moderate shifts in p, but the Bernoulli CUSUM chart is better for detecting large shifts in p. It is shown that it is best to choose a relatively small sample size when applying the CUSUM charts. As expected, the CUSUM charts are substantially faster than the traditional Shewhart p-chart for detecting small shifts in p. But, surprisingly, the CUSUM charts are also better than the p-chart for detecting large shifts in p.