Topic: Quality Management

Textbook chapter: Supplement 6

Session 15

Tuesday, 7th March 2023

Session plan

Topics to be discussed
Why quality control?
Frito Lay process control
Types of variations
Control charts
Types of control charts
1. Variable control charts
X and R charts

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 Root cause of all quality problems?

????
Variation
No variation? Process would always function as desired.
Complete variation? Process would never function as desired.

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Frito Lay: Practical motivation (Check shared video)

Practices which contribute to Frito-Lay’s whopping 60% market share.
Frito-Lay is committed to quality in four key areas:
1. Quality ingredients
2. Strict adherence to recipes
3. Adherence to all process parameters
4. Twice per shift inspections that mimic consumer inspections (e.g., bag appearance,
snack taste, etc.).
Continuous improvement is the heart of the firm’s quality assurance program. Frito-Lay
focuses on two key metrics:
1. Customer complaints per million bags
2. Hitting the center line on SPC charts for various attributes such as oil content, mois-
ture, seasoning, salt, thickness, and weight.
The plant has nine critical checkpoints in the production process, which are all shown in
the video.
A significant portion of the video includes a thorough explanation of SPC charts, including
an example of how to produce an x-bar chart, with a known population standard deviation,
for the percent salt content in potato chips.
The video then shows us how the operator at Frito-Lay produces an SPC chart observation,
from scooping the samples to measuring the salt content to updating the chart. 4 / 19
 Types of variation
Common causes/ Natural variations
Natural/Random variation
Appear to be inherent in a process
Because they are always active, they cause variation in all of the process output all
the time. (predictable)
Common causes comprise a group of factors which are mostly small and uncontrollable.
Determines the control limits

Common causes/ Natural variations

When there are only common causes present, a process will be operating as
consistently and predictably as possible under the current conditions.

Shewhart described such a process as operating “in statistical control” (sta-

ble).

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Types of variation . . .

Special causes/ Assignable variations

A special cause is a dominant source of variation which is not part of the routine
process variation (i.e., it is not inherent in the system).
A special cause is typically sporadic and unpredictable.
When it is active, a special cause will change the behavior of the process.

Special causes/ Assignable variations

In the presence of a special cause, a process is often described as out-of-

control or unstable, and the process becomes unpredictable.

Variation that occurs outside of the control limits.

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 The two types of variation
Example to explain the notion of common causes of variation and how they differ from
assignable causes.
Take a piece of paper and write three rows, each containing the capital letter R eight times.
Variations:
1. Use your “normal” writing hand for the first row.
2. Then, switch hands and write the eight Rs in the second row with the hand that you
typically do not write with.
3. Finally, for the last row, use your “normal” writing hand for the first four Rs and then
switch hands for the last four.
Examples of variation types

Observation? The pattern of letters in the last row is different. Following the fourth R, the
process changes substantially.
This variation can be clearly assigned to the cause of switching hands. 7 / 19

Control Charts
Why to use control charts?

The purpose of a control chart is to distinguish between common and assignable

causes of variation.

The control limits ’filter out’ the common cause variation and signal the presence
of any special causes.

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Control Charts . . .

9 / 19

Control Charts . . .

10 / 19
 Control Charts . . .

The control chart was introduced by Dr. W. Shewhart during the 1920s.
Shewhart based on empirical analysis was aware that for any process, most of the common
cause variation will be captured within a spread of six standard deviation.
This is rationale behind setting the control limits apart at a distance of 6 standard deviation.
11 / 19

Control Charts . . .

Control limits?
As the control limits are usually set equally about the centerline of the chart, these
limits are often referred as ±3σ limits.

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 Types of Control Charts
Four charts to be discussed
Variable control charts
Continuous data
If there exists a single, measurable variable that determines if a unit is defective or
not one should always use variable control charts.
x and R Charts
Example? time, length, width, weight, speed
Attribute control charts
Discrete data
Control charts for attributes are used when the process characteristic is counted rather
than measured.
Example? The number of defective items in a sample is counted, whereas the length
of each item is measured.
There are two types of attribute control charts, one for the fraction of defective items
in a sample (a p-chart) and one for the number of defects per unit (a c-chart).
p charts When observations can be placed into one of two categories. a. Good or bad
b. Pass or fail c. Operate or don’t operate
c charts When only the number of occurrences per unit of measure can be counted;
non-occurrences cannot be counted. 13 / 19

Central limit theorem

Central limit theorem? Regardless of the distribution of the population, the distribution of
sample means (each of which is a mean of a sample drawn from the population) drawn
from the population will tend to follow a normal distribution as the number of samples
increases.
Using the theorem:
1. The mean of the distribution of the sample means (x) will equal the mean of the
overall population (called µ )

(x) = µ
2. The standard deviation of the sampling distribution , σx , will be the population
(process) standard deviation, divided by the square root of the sample size, n.
σ
σx = √
n

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 Population and sample distributions . . .

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X , R control charts

In the X chart, the y-axis corresponds to the mean of each sample.

The X chart tells us about the changes in the mean of a process.
X charts can be used to document trends over time and to identify unexpected drifts
(e.g., resulting from the wear of a tool) or jumps (e.g., resulting from a new person
operating a process step), corresponding to assignable causes of variation.
x1 + x2 · · · + xn
X =
n

In the R (range) chart, the y-axis corresponds to the range of each sample.
The R chart tells us about the changes in the dispersion of a process.
The range is the difference between the highest value in the sample and the lowest
value in the sample.
R = max{x1 , x2 , . . . xn } − min{x1 , x2 , . . . xn }

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 Determining control limits for X , R Charts . . .
When population σ is known, X chart control limits are given by:
UCLx = x + zσx , LCLx = x − zσx
where,
x = mean of the sample means or a target value set for the process
z = number of normal standard deviations (2 for √95.45% confidence, 3 for 99.73%)
σx = standard deviation of sample means = σ/ n
σ = population (process) standard deviation
n = sample size
When population σ is not known, X chart control limits are given by:
UCLx = x + A2 ∗ R, LCLx = x − A2 ∗ R
where,
Pk
Ri
R = i=1 k = average range of all the samples;
Ri = range for sample i
k = total number of samples
R chart control limits
UCLR = D4 ∗ R, LCLR = D3 ∗ R
A2 , D3 , D4 = control chart factors based on sample size, n
17 / 19

Table to check for control chart factors A2 , D3 , D4

Source: Adapted from Eugene Grant and Richard Leavenworth, Statistical Quality Control, 5th ed. 1980 McGraw-Hill Education. 18 / 19
 X , R charts: Numerical example
Determining Control Limits for means
A quality inspector took five samples (k = 5), each with four observations (n = 4), of the length
of time for glue to dry. The analyst computed the mean of each sample and then computed the
grand mean. All values are in minutes. Use this information to obtain three-sigma (i.e., z = 3)
control limits for means of future times. It is known from previous experience that the standard
deviation of the process is .02 minute.

Question: Plot the X , R charts. For X chart, consider both the cases a) when population
σ is known, b) when population σ is not known. Using control charts, check whether the
process is in control or not. 19 / 19