An Overview of Control Charts for High‐quality Processes

Major difficulties in the study of high‐quality processes with traditional process monitoring techniques are a high false alarm rate and a negative lower control limit. The purpose of time‐between‐events control charts is to overcome existing problems in the high‐quality process monitoring setup. Time‐between‐events charts detect an out‐of‐control situation without great loss of sensitivity as compared with existing charts. High‐quality control charts gained much attention over the last decade because of the technological revolution. This article is dedicated to providing an overview of recent research and presenting it in a unifying framework. To summarize results and draw a precise conclusion from the statistical point of view, cross‐tabulations are also given in this article. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic Probability Control Limits for Lower and Two‐Sided Risk‐Adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM Charts

Because of its advantages of design, performance, and effectiveness in reducing the effect of patients' prior risks, the risk‐adjusted Bernoulli cumulative sum (CUSUM) chart is widely applied to monitor clinical and surgical outcome performance. In practice, it is beneficial to obtain evidence of improved surgical performance using the lower risk‐adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM charts. However, it had been shown that the in‐control performance of the charts with constant control limits varies considerably for different patient populations. In our study, we apply the dynamic probability control limits (DPCLs) developed for the upper risk‐adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM charts to the lower and two‐sided charts and examine their in‐control performance. The simulation results demonstrate that the in‐control performance of the lower risk‐adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM charts with DPCLs can be controlled for different patient populations, because these limits are determined for each specific sequence of patients. In addition, practitioners could also run upper and lower risk‐adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM charts with DPCLs side by side simultaneously and obtain desired in‐control performance for the two‐sided chart for any particular sequence of patients for a surgeon or hospital.     

Phase II Shewhart‐type Control Charts for Monitoring Times Between Events and Effects of Parameter Estimation

Monitoring times between events (TBE) is an important aspect of process monitoring in many areas of applications. This is especially true in the context of high‐quality processes, where the defect rate is very low, and in this context, control charts to monitor the TBE have been recommended in the literature other than the attribute charts that monitor the proportion of defective items produced. The Shewhart‐type t‐chart assuming an exponential distribution is one chart available for monitoring the TBE. The t‐chart was then generalized to the t_r‐chart to improve its performance, which is based on the times between the occurrences of r (≥1) events. In these charts, the in‐control (IC) parameter of the distribution is assumed known. This is often not the case in practice, and the parameter has to be estimated before process monitoring and control can begin. We propose estimating the parameter from a phase I (reference) sample and study the effects of estimation on the design and performance of the charts. To this end, we focus on the conditional run length distribution so as to incorporate the ‘practitioner‐to‐practitioner’ variability (inherent in the estimates), which arises from different reference samples, that leads to different control limits (and hence to different IC average run length [ARL] values) and false alarm rates, which are seen to be far different from their nominal values. It is shown that the required phase I sample size needs to be considerably larger than what has been typically recommended in the literature to expect known parameter performance in phase II. We also find the minimum number of phase I observations that guarantee, with a specified high probability, that the conditional IC ARL will be at least equal to a given small percentage of a nominal IC ARL. Along the same line, a lower prediction bound on the conditional IC ARL is also obtained to ensure that for a given phase I sample, the smallest IC ARL can be attained with a certain (high) probability. Summary and recommendations are given. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Statistical Control Chart for Monitoring High‐dimensional Poisson Data Streams

Multivariate count data are popular in the quality monitoring of manufacturing and service industries. However, seldom effort has been paid on high‐dimensional Poisson data and two‐sided mean shift situation. In this article, a hybrid control chart for independent multivariate Poisson data is proposed. The new chart was constructed based on the test of goodness of fit, and the monitoring procedure of the chart was shown. The performance of the proposed chart was evaluated using Monte Carlo simulation. Numerical experiments show that the new chart is very powerful and sensitive at detecting both positive and negative mean shifts. Meanwhile, it is more robust than other existing multiple Poisson charts for both independent and correlated variables. Besides, a new standardization method for Poisson data was developed in this article. A real example was also shown to illustrate the detailed steps of the new chart. Copyright © 2016 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.     

Control Charts For Monitoring The Weibull Shape Parameter Based On Type‐II Censored Sample

In this paper, a new statistic is proposed to monitor the Weibull shape parameter when the sample is type II censored. The one‐sided and two‐sided average run length‐unbiased control charts are derived based on the new monitoring statistic. The control limits of the proposed control charts depend on the sample size, the failure number and the false alarm rate. Using Monte Carlo simulation, the performance of the proposed control charts is studied and compared with the range‐based charts proposed by Pascual and Li (2012), which is equivalent to the proposed control charts when r = 2. The simulation results show that the proposed control charts perform better than the ones of Pascual and Li (2012). This paper also evaluates the effects of parameter estimation on the proposed control charts. Finally, an example is used to illustrate the proposed control charts. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Economic and Economic‐Statistical Designs of Phase II Profile Monitoring

In economic design of profiles, parameters of a profile are determined such that the total implementation cost is minimized. These parameters consist of the number of set points, n, the interval between two successive sampling, h, and the parameters of a control chart used for monitoring. In this paper, the Lorenzen–Vance cost function is extended to model the costs associated with implementing profiles. The in‐control and the out‐of‐control average run lengths, ARL₀ and ARL₁, respectively, are used as two statistical measures to evaluate the statistical performances of the proposed model. A genetic algorithm (GA) is developed for solving both the economic and the economic‐statistical models, where response surface methodology is employed to tune the GA parameters. Results indicate satisfactory statistical performance without much increase in the cost of implementation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Monitoring the Process Mean When Standards Are Unknown: A Classic Problem Revisited

One of the most common applications in statistical process monitoring is the use of control charts to monitor a process mean. In practice, this is often performed with a Shewhart chart along with a Shewhart R (or an S) chart. Thus, two charts are typically used together, as a scheme, each using the 3‐sigma limits. Moreover, the process mean and standard deviation are often unknown and need to be estimated before monitoring can begin. We show that there are three major issues with this monitoring scheme described in most textbooks. The first issue is not accounting for the effects of parameter estimation, which is known to degrade chart performance. The second issue is the implicit assumption that the charting statistics are both normally distributed and, accordingly, using the 3‐sigma limits. The third issue is multiple charting, because two charts are used, in this scheme, at the same time. We illustrate the deleterious effects of these issues on the in‐control properties of the charting scheme and present a method for finding the correct charting constants taking proper account of these issues. Tables of the new charting constants are provided for some commonly used nominal in‐control average run length values and different sample sizes. This will aid in implementing the charting scheme correctly in practice. Examples are given along with a summary and some conclusions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A New Control Scheme for Phase‐II Monitoring of Simple Linear Profiles in Multistage Processes

In this paper, a new control scheme is proposed for Phase‐II monitoring of simple linear profiles in multistage processes. In this scheme, an approach based on the U transformation is first applied to remove the effect of the cascade property involved in multistage processes. Then, a single max‐EWMA‐3 control statistic is derived based on the adjusted parameter estimates for simultaneous monitoring of all the parameters of a simple linear profile in each stage. Not only is the proposed scheme able to detect both increasing and decreasing shifts but it also has the feature of identifying the out‐of‐control parameter responsible for the source of process shift. Using extensive simulation experiments, the performance of the proposed method is evaluated and is compared with the ones of some other available methods for both weak and strong autocorrelations. Moreover, the diagnostic performance of the proposed method is evaluated. The results show that the proposed scheme performs well and works better than the competing methods. The application of the proposed method is illustrated at the end using a numerical example. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A bootstrap control chart for Birnbaum–Saunders percentiles

The problem of detecting a shift in the percentile of a Birnbaum–Saunders population in a process monitoring situation is considered. For example, such problems may arise when the quality characteristic of interest is tensile strength or breaking stress. The parametric bootstrap method is used to develop a quality control chart for monitoring percentiles when process measurements have a Birnbaum–Saunders distribution. Through extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the behavior and performance of the proposed bootstrap percentile charts. Average run lengths of the proposed percentile chart are also investigated. Illustrative examples with the data concerning the tensile strength of the aluminum sheeting are presented. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.