Statistical Process Control

Using Control Charts to Monitor

“Quality”
 Walter Shewhart
Developer of Control Charts in the late 1920’s

www.york.ac.uk/.../ histstat/people/welcome.htm
 Statistical Process Control
• SPC does not refer to a particular
technique, algorithm or procedure
• SPC is an optimisation philosophy
concerned with continuous process
improvements, using a collection of
(statistical) tools for
– data and process analysis
– making inferences about process behaviour
– decision making

http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/spc/spc1.htm
 Ultimately, SPC seeks to
maximize profit by:
• improving product quality
• improving productivity
• streamlining process
• reducing wastage
• reducing emissions
• improving customer service, etc.

http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/spc/spc1.htm
 Control Charts
• Control charts are particularly useful for
monitoring quality and giving early warnings
that a process may be going “Out of Control”
and on its way to producing defective parts.
http://www.pqsystems.com/products/SPC/CHARTrunner/CHARTrunnerChartingExample1.php
 Objectives
• Be able to explain how control charts
relate to assigned dimension and
tolerance
• State what value you get from control
charts
• Be able to name several ways that control
charts indicate that a process is “out of
control”
Reminder:

Normal Distribution
Defined by two parameters:
mean and standard deviation

http://www.campbell.berry.edu/faculty/jgrout/spclecture.ppt
Example:
Suppose we specify a dimension
and tolerance as shown.

2.500.05

Questions:
- What does the X control chart look like?

- How does control chart relate to the tolerances?

 Control charts are normal distributions
with an added time dimension

http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/spc/spc8.htm#interpretation
Control charts provide a graphical means
for testing hypotheses about the data
being monitored. Consider the commonly
used Shewhart Chart as an example.

http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/spc/spc8.htm#interpretation
 What does the X control chart look like?
- First we measure a number of parts as they come off the line.
- For example we might measure 4 parts per hour for 20 hours.
- Those 80 parts would give us an overall mean and standard deviation
that would define the control chart.
- The average of the size of the four parts would give us
the y values for each hour (plotted on the x-axis)

+3

-3

Time
How does the control
chart relate to the tolerances?
Assigned Tolerances

2.45 2.55

-3 +3

Measured Variation
 Value of Control Charts
• Defect Prevention through “Early Warning”
• Prevent “Over-Tweaking” of Process
• Assures that Process is Working
• Provides Information on “Process
Capability”
 Defect Prevention
• When you see signs that the process is
“out of control” you can look for and fix the
causes before you make bad parts.
• The control chart can help you distinguish
between “common cause” and “special
cause” problems.
Q - How do you know a process is “out of control”?

A – When the data aren’t “normal”

“Out of Control” cues include

- Points outside of control limits (3σ)
- 8 consecutive points on one side of center line
- 2 of 3 consecutive points outside the 2 limits
- 4 of 5 points outside the 1  limits
- 7 consecutive points trending up or down
Screen Dump from MiniTab
 Prevent “Over-Tweaking”
• Without understanding of the statistics you
can chase your tail trying to get rid of
variation
 Process Capability
• Comparing the control chart information
with the tolerance specification tells you
about the process capability.
The capability index is defined as:
Cp = (allowable range)/6s = (USL - LSL)/6s

LSL USL (Upper Specification Limit)

LCL UCL (Upper Control Limit)

http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/spc/spc9.htm
 The process performance index
takes account of the mean (m) and
is defined as:
Cpk = min[ (USL - m)/3s, (m - LSL)/3ss ]
LSL USL (Upper Specification Limit)

LCL UCL (Upper Control Limit)

http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/spc/spc9.htm
Process Capability Assigned Tolerances

2.45 2.55
Good
CPK>1

-3 +3

Measured Variation
Poor
CPK<1

-3 +3
Tolerance Stackups
Tolerance Stack-up for an O-Ring

www.afmusa.com/doc_ generator.asp?doc_id=1238
 How to calculate Stack-up
• WC – Worst Case (add all the tolerances
at full value)
• RSS – Root Sum Squared (add the
tolerances statistically)
• Monte Carlo (use part distribution data to
predict the distribution of the added
tolerances)