Example

An accounts department started an improvement project to try to reduce the number

of internal purchase forms that its users completed incorrectly. As an overall measure
of their success, they used a p-type Control Chart to measure the proportion of
purchase forms that were not completed correctly. This was chosen, rather than
measuring the actual number of defects, because any number of defects on a form
required about the same effort to revise.
Each point on the chart represented all purchase forms for one day. This was chosen
as it allowed a 25-point chart to be drawn reasonably quickly. This subgroup size was
permissible as, even though the number of forms in each group was less than 50, the
number of defective forms in each subgroup was more than 4.
A Pareto Chart indicated that the development department made most mistakes, and a
survey indicated that they did not understand the form. On the 15th of the month, a
half-hour training class was held for the development people. The table and illustration
below shows the calculation and Control Chart for the month. It can be seen that after
the training, there were nine points in a row below the center line indicating a
statistically significant improvement.
In the next month, the proportion defective was further reduced by extending the
training to other departments. Before long, there were so few wrongly completed
purchase forms that the subgroup period had to be extended to one week.

Table 1. Example

Day of Number of Number of proportion LCL UCL

month purchase defective defective, p p-3σ p+3σ
forms, n forms

1 24 14 0.583 0.073 0.663

2 35 16 0.457 0.123 0.613
3 27 12 0.444 0.09 0.646
4 23 12 0.522 0.066 0.67
5 19 5 0.263 0.036 0.7
6 22 14 0.636 0.06 0.677
7 31 12 0.387 0.108 0.628
10 25 6 0.24 0.079 0.657
11 22 14 0.636 0.06 0.677
12 17 5 0.294 0.017 0.719
13 26 11 0.423 0.084 0.652
14 30 16 0.533 0.104 0.632
17 21 8 0.381 0.052 0.684
18 35 10 0.286 0.123 0.613
19 24 7 0.292 0.073 0.663
20 31 7 0.226 0.108 0.628
21 31 6 0.194 0.108 0.628
24 32 11 0.344 0.112 0.624
25 27 5 0.185 0.09 0.646
 26 15 5 0.333 0 0.742
27 31 7 0.226 0.108 0.628
28 28 9 0.321 0.095 0.641

(σ=Sqroot[p(1-p)/n])

Fig. 1. Example Control Chart