Communications in Statistics - Simulation and

Computation

ISSN: 0361-0918 (Print) 1532-4141 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/lssp20

A Nonparametric Shewhart-Type Synthetic Control

Chart

V. Y. Pawar & D. T. Shirke

To cite this article: V. Y. Pawar & D. T. Shirke (2010) A Nonparametric Shewhart-Type Synthetic
Control Chart, Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation, 39:8, 1493-1505, DOI:
10.1080/03610918.2010.503014

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03610918.2010.503014

Published online: 27 Aug 2010.

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Communications in Statistics—Simulation and Computation® , 39: 1493–1505, 2010
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0361-0918 print/1532-4141 online
DOI: 10.1080/03610918.2010.503014

A Nonparametric Shewhart-Type
Synthetic Control Chart

V. Y. PAWAR1 AND D. T. SHIRKE2

1
Department of Statistics, Vivekanand College, Kolhapur, India
2
Department of Statistics, Shivaji University, Kolhapur, India

In this article, we provide a nonparametric Shewhart-type synthetic control chart

based on the signed-rank statistic to monitor shifts in the known in-control process
median. The synthetic control chart is a combination of a signed-rank chart due to
Bakir (2004) and a conforming run length chart due to Bourke (1991). The operation
and design of the chart are discussed and the performance of the chart has been
studied. The chart has an attractive average run length behavior as compared to the
parametric control chart for a class of symmetric continuous process distributions.
The proposed chart performs better than the nonparametric signed-rank chart given
by Bakir (2004) and Chakraborti and Eryilmaz (2007).

Keywords Average run length; Conforming run length; Synthetic control chart.

Mathematics Subject Classification 62G86; 62P30.

1. Introduction
A control chart is one of the most useful tools for monitoring quality of the
characteristic of interest in a manufacturing process. Most of the control charts
are based on the assumption that the process characteristic follows a normal
distribution. Many researchers have pointed out that not all processes are normally
distributed; see, for example, Chou et al. (2001) and the references cited therein.
The standard control charts do not perform well, if the assumption of normality
is not satisfied. The effects of non normality on the X-bar were studied in the
literature, and include, among others, Burr (1967), Schilling and Nelson (1976), and
Bradley (1971, 1973). This demands construction of nonparametric control charts.
A chart is said to be nonparametric, if the run length distribution of the chart does
not depend on the underlying process distribution when there is no shift in the
process parameter under study. Hence, the in-control Average Run Length (ARL)
of nonparametric chart does not depend on the underlying process distribution.
Amin et al. (1995) provided nonparametric quality control charts based on the

Received April 20, 2009; Accepted June 17, 2010

Address correspondence to V. Y. Pawar, Department of Statistics, Vivekanand College,
Kolhapur 416 003, India; E-mail: vypawar_stats@rediffmail.com

1493
1494 Pawar and Shirke

sign statistic. Bakir and Reynolds (1979) provided a control chart based on within
group ranking. Hackl and Ledolter (1991) provided a control chart based on ranks.
A good review on nonparametric charts is given by Chakraborti et al. (2001) and
Chakraborti and Graham (2007). Bakir (2004) reported a control chart based on
signed-rank statistic, which was further improved in terms of ARL by Chakraborti
and Eryilmaz (2007).
In this article, a synthetic control chart for monitoring the median of a
continuous characteristic of the underlying process is provided. The main purpose
of this article is to improve the performance of the existing nonparametric control
charts based on the signed-rank statistic for a wide class of process distributions.
Wu and Spedding (2000) developed synthetic control chart for detecting shifts in the
mean of a normally distributed process, which combines the Shewhart X-bar chart
and the conforming run length (CRL) chart due to Bourke (1991). Ghute and Shirke
(2008a,b) provided synthetic control charts in the multivariate set up. The synthetic
control chart proposed in this article combines the nonparametric chart due to Bakir
(2004) with the CRL control chart due to Bourke (1991). The rest of the article is
organized as follows.
In Sec. 2, we briefly describe the control chart based on the signed-rank statistic,
while Sec. 3 gives a description of the conforming run length chart. In Sec. 4, the
synthetic signed-rank control chart is described and its design and operation is
discussed. In Sec. 5, the performance of the proposed chart is reported. Section 6
gives an illustration of the chart with data from Montgomery (2001) and Sec. 7
provides a summary and conclusions.

2. A Control Chart Based on the Signed-Rank Statistic

Let (Xt1
Xt2
  
Xtn ) be a random sample (subgroup) of size n > 1 observed from
a continuous process with median  at sampling instances t = 1
2
   It is assumed
that the underlying process distribution is continuous symmetric and that the
in-control process median is known or specified to be equal to 0 . We further
assume that 0 is known and when 
= 0 the process is out of control. Bakir (2004)
provided a nonparametric control chart based on the signed-rank statistic. For the
tth subgroup sample (xt1
xt2
  
xtn ), the signed-rank statistic is defined as

n
t = signxtj − 0 R+
tj t = 1
2
  
(1)
j=1

where sign u = −1
0
1 if u0
= 0
0 and

n
R+
tj = 1 + Ixti − 0  < xtj − 0 
i=1

with Ia < b = 1 if a < b and 0 otherwise.

We can rewrite (1) as

nn + 1
t = 2wt+ −
(2)
2
where wt+ is the well-known Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Statistic (the sum of the ranks
of the absolute values of the deviations corresponding to the positive deviations).
 A Nonparametric Synthetic Control Chart 1495

One can therefore use t given in (2) as a charting statistic instead using (1). When
n = 1, t takes values +1 or −1. Therefore, it is not feasible to construct the chart in
this case. Let UCL denote the upper control limit corresponding to a positive-sided
control chart. The chart gives an out of control signal at the first sampling instance
t for which t ≥ UCL. Bakir (2004) tabulated the UCL and the in-control ARL for
various subgroup sample sizes and the false-alarm rates. Bakir (2004) showed that
the Shewhart-type control chart based on the signed-rank statistic is more efficient
than the traditional Shewhart X-bar chart under heavy-tailed distributions (e.g., the
double exponential and Cauchy) but is less efficient under light-tailed distributions
(e.g,. the normal and uniform). Chakraborti and Eryilmaz (2007) further improved
the performance of the chart due to Bakir (2004) by considering 2-of-2 runs rule.
The 2-of-2 chart gives out of control signal at the first sampling instance t, when two
consecutive charting statistics plot on or outside UCL. The 2-of-2 chart was shown
to perform better even in case of the normal distribution. We propose a synthetic
control chart by combining the chart due to Bakir (2004) with the CRL control chart
which is better than the 2-of-2 chart. In the following section we briefly describe CRL
control chart.

3. The Conforming Run Length Control Chart

The CRL chart was originally developed for attribute quality control by
Bourke (1991). We describe the CRL chart in this setting. In 100% inspection, the
CRL is the number of inspected units between two consecutive non conforming units
(including the ending non conforming unit). The CRL chart uses the CRL as the
charting statistic. The idea behind the CRL chart is that the conforming run length
will change when the fraction non conforming ‘p’ in the process changes. The CRL is
shortened as p increases and lengthened as p decreases. The charting statistic (CRL)
follows a geometric distribution with parameter p. The mean value of CRL (i.e., the
average number of inspected units in a CRL sample) is

1
CRL = (3)
p

and the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of CRL is,

Fp CRL = 1 − 1 − pCRL  CRL = 1
2
   (4)

If our only concern is the detection of an increase in p, the lower control limit
(denoted L) is sufficient for the CRL chart. If CRL is the specified/desired Type I
error of the CRL chart and p0 is the in-control fraction non-conforming, L can be
derived from the following equation:

CRL = Fp0 L = 1 − 1 − p0 L

which gives

ln1 − CRL 
L=  (5)
ln1 − p0 
1496 Pawar and Shirke

Note that L must be rounded to the largest integer smaller than or equal to the
calculated value in (5). If the sample CRL (i.e., the charting statistic) is smaller than
or equal to L then it is very likely that the fraction non-conforming p has increased
and therefore, an out-of-control signal will be given. ARLCRL is the average number
of CRL samples required to detect change in p. The ARLCRL is given by

1
ARLCRL =  (6)
1 − 1 − pL

Let ANSCRL be the average number of the inspected units required to signal a
fraction non conforming shift. It is given by

ANSCRL = CRL × ARLCRL

1
=  (7)
p1 − 1 − pL 

4. A Nonparametric Synthetic Control Chart

The proposed nonparametric synthetic control chart is a combination of the
nonparametric signed-rank control chart based on t (called the t chart hereafter)
and the CRL chart. Basically, the operation of the nonparametric synthetic control
chart is similar to that of the synthetic control chart for monitoring the process
mean as was proposed by Wu and Spedding (2000), except that the subgroup mean
is replaced by the signed-rank statistic t and the upper control limit is changed
accordingly. However, we do not follow the same design procedure due to Wu and
Spedding (2000) in order to ensure that the synthetic control chart is nonparametric.

4.1. Operation
The operation of the nonparametric synthetic control chart is as follows.
1. Decide on the upper control limit of the t chart and the lower limit L of the
CRL chart. The design of these control parameters will be described shortly.
2. At each inspection point “t” take a random sample of n observations and
calculate t .
3. If t < UCL, (the sample is called a conforming sample) then control flow goes
back to step (2) (That is, continue to draw random samples from the process
and calculate the statistic t ). Otherwise, the sample is called a non conforming
sample and control flow goes to the next step.
4. Check the number of samples between the current and the last non-conforming
sample (including the current sample). This number is taken as the value of the
plotting statistic (i.e., CRL) of the CRL chart in the synthetic chart.
5. If this CRL is larger than the lower control limit of the CRL chart, then the
process is thought to be under control and the charting procedure is continued.
Otherwise, the process is declared to be out of control and control flow goes to
the next step.
6. Take the necessary action to find and remove the assignable cause(s).
 A Nonparametric Synthetic Control Chart 1497

4.2. Design
The synthetic chart has two parameters namely, L and UCL. For given in-control
ARL and subgroup sample size n, the parameters L and UCL are obtained as follows:
We note that the in-control ARL of the synthetic chart is given by ARLs(0),
where
1
ARLs0 =
(8)
p01 − 1 − p0L 

and p
 = Prt ≥ UCL   = 0 +
.
Here, p
 is the probability that the sample is non conforming when the
permanent upward step shift of
units occurs in the process. When there is no shift,

is equal to zero. We note that in Eq. (7), “p” is the probability that a unit is
non conforming, while p
 defined above is the probability that the sample is non
conforming. Thus, p
 plays the role of p in Eq. (7).
Suppose the desired in-control ARL is ARL0 and the subgroup sample size is n.
We compute the ARLs(0) values using Eq. (8) for UCL = 1
2
  
nn + 1/2 and
L = 1
2
   and choose that pair of (L
UCL) for which the ARLs0 is close to
ARL0 . We may note that for a fixed value of UCL
ARLs0 is a decreasing function
of L, while for a fixed value of L
ARLs0 is a non decreasing function of UCL.
Table 1 gives the values of ARLs0 for n = 5. As an example, suppose we wish to
set ARL0 at 32. Then, from Table 1, we see that L = 4 and UCL = 10 is the required
pair as the ARLs(0) corresponding to these values is 32.77. Similarly, if the desired
ARL0 is 50, we have L = 6 and UCL = 12, which gives an ARLs(0) of 49.83. Due
to the discrete nature of the charting statistic t , for a fixed value of L, we get the
same value of ARLs(0) for two successive values of UCL (except for UCL = 1). We

Table 1
In control ARL values for positive sided chart for various values of UCL and L
when n = 5
L

UCL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 400 267 229 213 206 203 202 201 200 200
2 606 380 311 281 266 257 253 250 248 248
3 606 380 311 281 266 257 253 250 248 248
4 1024 607 474 412 378 358 345 337 331 328
5 1024 607 474 412 378 358 345 337 331 328
6 2090 1173 874 729 645 592 556 531 513 499
7 2090 1173 874 729 645 592 556 531 513 499
8 4096 2222 1603 1298 1118 1001 920 861 817 783
9 4096 2222 1603 1298 1118 1001 920 861 817 783
10 11378 5969 4171 3277 2744 2391 2142 1957 1815 1703
11 11378 5969 4171 3277 2744 2391 2142 1957 1815 1703
12 25600 13213 9090 7032 5801 4983 4402 3967 3632 3365
13 25600 13213 9090 7032 5801 4983 4402 3967 3632 3365
14 102400 52013 35223 26832 21801 18449 16058 14267 12875 11764
15 102400 52013 35223 26832 21801 18449 16058 14267 12875 11764
1498 Pawar and Shirke

choose the minimum value of UCL in order to get an early out of control signal.
It is clear from the Table 1 that for n = 5 we can set in-control ARL value any where
from 2–1024. Further, we note that the in-control ARL value is the function of the
sub-group sample size n, UCL and L.

5. Performance of the Synthetic Signed-Rank Control Chart

When there is a shift in the process median, the distribution of the charting statistic
is difficult to obtain. Therefore, we use simulation to obtain the ARL values and
the quartiles for various values of shifts in the process median. A simulation study
based on 10,000 runs is performed with n = 5, n = 10 when the corresponding
desired ARL values are 32 and 380, respectively. The simulation study is carried
for three continuous distributions namely the normal, double exponential, and
√
Cauchy. As in Bakir (2004), the scale parameter is set to be  = 1/ 2 for the
double exponential, distribution to achieve a standard deviation of 1.0. For the
Cauchy distribution,  = 02605 is chosen to achieve a tail probability of 0.05
above  + 1645, the same as that of a normal distribution with a mean  and a
standard deviation of 1.0. These three distributions are continuous symmetric about
their median but have different tail behavior. Moreover, the tail probabilities, say
above 3 are 0.0013499, 0.007185, and 0.0275707, while the tail probabilities above
4 are 0.00003167, 0.0017467, and 0.0207007, respectively, for the normal, double
exponential, and Cauchy distributions.
The results of the simulation study are presented in Tables 2–13.
In all the tables we report the simulated (i.e., empirical) ARL values for the
synthetic chart, the 1-of-1 chart due to Bakir (2004), and the 2-of-2 chart due to
Chakraborti and Eryilmaz (2007). The ARL values for X-bar chart have also been
provided.
From Tables 2–7, it is observed that:
(i) When compared to Shewhart X-bar chart, the 1-of-1 signed-rank control chart
performs better for small shifts up to magnitudes of 0.6 under the double
exponential distribution and for all shifts under the Cauchy distribution for
sample sizes n = 5 and n = 10. However, its performance under the normal
distribution is inferior to that of the X-bar chart.

Table 2
ARL values for positive sided charts for Normal distribution (n = 5)
Synthetic
Shift UCL = 10 2-of-2 1-of-1 X-bar
( − 0 ) L=4 UCL = 7 UCL = 15 UCL = 0833
0.0 3277 2547 3200 3200
0.2 1006 1049 1560 1274
0.4 451 545 822 601
0.6 249 360 500 332
0.8 175 274 331 212
1.0 138 234 240 155
1.2 119 214 184 126
 A Nonparametric Synthetic Control Chart 1499

Table 3
ARL values for positive sided charts for double exponential
distribution when n = 5
Synthetic
Shift UCL = 10 2-of-2 1-of-1 X-bar
( − 0 ) L=4 UCL = 7 UCL = 15 UCL = 0840
0.0 3277 2547 3200 3200
0.2 745 858 1040 1383
0.4 317 456 531 658
0.6 196 320 330 351
0.8 152 262 238 216
1.0 129 232 190 153
1.2 116 217 160 125

Table 4
ARL values for positive sided charts for Cauchy distribution n = 5
Synthetic
Shift UCL = 10 2-of-2 1-of-1 X-bar
( − 0 ) L=4 UCL = 7 UCL = 15 UCL = 26
0.0 3277 2547 3200 3200
0.2 370 565 560 2910
0.4 192 361 273 2693
0.6 153 296 203 2401
0.8 136 271 171 2205
1.0 126 256 152 1931
1.2 122 246 142 1738

Table 5
ARL values for positive sided charts for Normal distribution n = 10
Synthetic
Shift UCL = 40 2-of-2 1-of-1 X-bar
( − 0 ) L=8 UCL = 33 UCL = 51 UCL = 088
0.0 38732 37856 34483 38000
0.2 3911 5248 8826 6467
0.4 819 1310 2522 1573
0.6 319 525 984 537
0.8 184 312 471 251
1.0 136 238 274 155
1.2 115 211 183 118
1500 Pawar and Shirke

Table 6
ARL values for positive sided charts for double exponential
distribution n = 10
Synthetic
Shift UCL = 40 2-of-2 1-of-1 X-bar
( − 0 ) L=8 UCL = 33 UCL = 51 UCL = 093
0.0 38732 37856 34483 38000
0.2 2198 5487 4555 8228
0.4 501 1050 1248 2143
0.6 240 447 545 700
0.8 165 294 307 298
1.0 133 238 208 170
1.2 117 216 161 123

(ii) The 2-of-2 control chart performs better than both the Shewhart X-bar chart
and the 1-of-1 chart for small shifts under the normal and the double
exponential distributions and for all shifts under the Cauchy distribution. But
its performance for large shifts under the normal and the double exponential
distributions is inferior to the Shewhart X-bar chart.
(iii) The proposed synthetic signed-rank control chart outperforms for all shifts
under all the distributions for n = 5 as well as n = 10. Moreover, the
performance of the synthetic signed-rank chart is significantly better than the
X-bar chart for heavy-tailed process distributions like the double exponential
and the Cauchy.
Chakraborti (2007) suggested studying the entire run length distribution for
more complete understanding of the performance of a chart. Therefore, besides
studying of the ARL performance of the control charts, we also study the three
quartiles, namely the first, second, and third quartiles (denoted by Q1 , Q2 , and
Q3 , respectively), of run length distributions. Tables 8–13 provide the quartiles of
the run length distributions of the synthetic, the 2-of-2 and the X-bar charts, for
n = 5 and n = 10, when the underlying process distributions are the normal, double

Table 7
ARL values for positive sided charts for Cauchy distribution n = 10
Synthetic
Shift UCL = 40 2-of-2 1-of-1 X-bar
( − 0 ) L=8 UCL = 33 UCL = 51 UCL = 315
0.0 38732 37856 34483 38000
0.2 705 1143 1475 37748
0.4 264 412 439 37507
0.6 188 291 261 37265
0.8 164 249 199 37024
1.0 147 232 171 36783
1.2 138 221 154 36542
 A Nonparametric Synthetic Control Chart 1501

Table 8
Quartiles of the run length distribution for the positive sided charts
under the normal distribution when n = 5
Synthetic 2-of-2 X-bar
Shift Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3
0.0 3 18 47 8 18 35 10 22 44
0.2 2 4 15 4 8 14 4 9 18
0.4 1 2 4 2 4 7 2 4 8
0.6 1 2 3 2 3 4 1 2 4
0.8 1 1 2 2 2 3 1 2 3
1.0 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 2
1.2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1

Table 9
Quartiles of the run length distribution for the positive sided charts
under the double distribution when n = 5
Synthetic 2-of-2 X-bar
Shift Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3
0.0 3 18 47 8 18 35 10 22 44
0.2 2 3 10 3 6 11 4 10 19
0.4 1 2 3 2 4 6 2 5 9
0.6 1 1 2 2 2 4 1 3 5
0.8 1 1 2 2 2 3 1 2 3
1.0 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 2
1.2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1

Table 10
Quartiles of the run length distribution for the positive sided charts
under the Cauchy when n = 5
Synthetic 2-of-2 X-bar
Shift Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3
0.0 3 18 47 8 18 35 10 22 44
0.2 1 2 4 2 4 7 9 20 40
0.4 1 1 2 2 3 4 8 19 38
0.6 1 1 2 2 2 4 7 17 33
0.8 1 1 2 2 2 3 7 15 29
1.0 1 1 1 2 2 3 6 14 27
1.2 1 1 1 2 2 2 5 12 23
1502 Pawar and Shirke

Table 11
Quartiles of the run length distribution for the positive sided charts
under the normal when n = 10
Synthetic 2-of-2 X-bar
Shift Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3
0.0 72 249 553 110 264 526 110 264 527
0.2 5 20 56 16 37 72 19 45 89
0.4 2 4 8 5 9 18 5 11 22
0.6 1 2 4 2 4 7 2 4 7
0.8 1 1 2 2 2 4 1 2 3
1.0 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 2
1.2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1

Table 12
Quartiles of the run length distribution for the positive sided charts
under the double exponential when n = 10
Synthetic 2-of-2 X-bar
Shift Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3
0.0 72 249 553 110 264 526 110 264 527
0.2 4 8 31 17 38 76 24 57 114
0.4 2 3 6 4 8 14 7 15 30
0.6 1 2 3 2 3 6 2 5 9
0.8 1 1 2 2 2 4 1 2 4
1.0 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 2 2
1.2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1

Table 13
Quartiles of the run length distribution for the positive sided charts
under the Cauchy when n = 10
Synthetic 2-of-2 X-bar
Shift Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3
0.0 72 249 553 110 264 526 110 264 527
0.2 2 4 8 4 8 15 109 262 523
0.4 1 2 3 2 3 5 108 260 520
0.6 1 1 2 2 2 4 108 258 516
0.8 1 1 2 2 2 3 107 257 513
1.0 1 1 2 2 2 2 106 255 510
1.2 1 1 2 2 2 2 105 253 506
 A Nonparametric Synthetic Control Chart 1503

exponential and Cauchy, respectively. Based on these tables, we observe that the
proposed synthetic control chart is preferable to both the 2-of-2 chart and the X-bar
chart since the synthetic chart has shorter inter-quartile ranges for all the three
distributions under study. The performance is better for n = 10 than for n = 5.
In case of the normal distribution, for n = 5 and a shift = 02, although the out
of control quartiles of the 2-of-2 chart seem to be better than that of the synthetic
chart, in-control ARL of the 2-of-2 control chart is 25.47 as against 32.77 of the
synthetic chart. Thus, the synthetic chart performs better than both the 2-of-2 and
X-bar charts with regard to out of control ARL and inter-quartile ranges.

6. Example
We illustrate the operation of the synthetic chart using data from (Montgomery,
2001, Example 5–6, pp. 267–268). The data set includes 20 samples each of five
observations. We assume that the underlying distribution is symmetric with an
in-control median 0 = 1622. Table 14 gives the values of the charting statistic t
for 20 samples. To have in-control ARL equal to 32, the parameters of the synthetic
chart are UCL = 10 and L = 4. We have constructed t chart and the CRL chart in
Figure 1 below. At the beginning we set CRL to be zero and increase its value by
one for every conforming sample. Here, the sample is conforming if t is less than
10 otherwise the sample is non conforming. It is clear that the first non conforming
sample occurs at time epoch 9 and the CRL at that time point is 9, which is above
L. So the process is assumed to be in control and we reset CRL to zero. The next
non conforming sample occurs at time epoch 10 with CRL equal to 1, which is below
L and hence we declare that the process runs out of control at time point 10.

Table 14
Signed rank statistics for the data in Montgomery (2001)
t 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
t −3 −4 7 0 2 5 5 −7 12 11 2 7 9 12 2 −1 9 1 2 −2

Figure 1. Synthetic chart for data from Montgomery (2001).

1504 Pawar and Shirke

7. Summary and Conclusions

Nonparametric Shewhart-type synthetic control charts can be useful for practioners
as these charts are easy to implement and have an attractive average run length
behavior as compared to the parametric control chart for a class of symmetric
continuous process distributions. The proposed charts have smaller out of control
ARL values for the same in-control ARL values for the three distributions considered
here. Further, the inter-quartile ranges of the run length distributions of the
proposed charts are also smaller than that of other charts considered here. The
synthetic chart is nonparametric in true sense as the in-control ARL does not depend
on the underlying process distribution. The synthetic chart performs well even for
small sub-group sample size and the desired in-control ARL value. The synthetic
chart studied here consists of Shewhart-type signed-rank chart and CRL chart, which
are available in the literature. It is clear from the Example (given above) that
one need not plot two different charts one each for Shewhart-type signed-rank
chart and CRL chart as they can be plotted on the same chart. The design of the
synthetic chart can be done using the procedure described in this article. A computer
program in open source software R is developed to obtain design parameters of the
synthetic chart and can be obtained from the authors. The synthetic chart performs
better than the Shewhart-type signed-rank chart and the 2-of-2 signed-rank chart
for a wide class of continuous symmetric distributions, which includes the normal,
double exponential and Cauchy. The results reported in this article are for detecting
permanent step upward shift in the median. One can develop control charts along
similar lines for detecting downward shifts or shifts in either direction.

Acknowledgment
The authors are very thankful to the Associate Editor and two referees for their
constructive criticisms and comments, which led to significant improvements in the
article.

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