Title: Economic control chart policies for monitoring variables

Authors: Erwin Saniga, Thomas McWilliams, Darwin Davis, James Lucas

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA. ' Department of Decision Sciences, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. ' Department of Business Administration, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA. ' 5120 New Kent Rd., Wilmington, DE 19808, USA

Abstract: In this paper, we compare the costs of an economically designed CUSUM control chart and a common Shewhart control chart, the X–bar chart for many configurations of parameters. Our results indicate that there are identifiable regions where there is an overwhelming cost advantage to using CUSUM charts. Additionally, we find that there are identifiable regions where an X–bar chart can be employed without any substantial economic disadvantage. Finally, we identify regions where a regular search policy is less costly than a policy of using either a CUSUM or X–bar chart.

Keywords: control charts; CUSUM charts; economic design; Shewhart charts; control chart design; statistical process control; SPC; process monitoring; process quality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPQM.2006.008377

International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 2006 Vol.1 No.1/2, pp.116 - 138

Published online: 12 Dec 2005 *

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