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Control Charts
for Attributes
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Sample
AGURE 8-12 U-chart for department
store customer survey.
8-9 OPERATING CHARACTERISTIC CURVES
FOR ATTRIBUTE CONTROL CHARTS
An operating characteristic (OC) curve plots the probability of incorrectly concluding
that a process is in control as a function of a process parameter. In other words, it is a
graph of the probability of a Type II error (denoted by ) versus the value of a process
parameter.
The choice of process parameter depends on the type of attribute chart under
consideration. For a p-chart, the parameter of interest is usually the true process pro-
portion nonconforming (p). An OC curve represents a measure of goodness of a con-
trol chart. It can be used to gauge the ability of a chart to detect changes in the process
parameter values (Wadsworth, Stephens, and Godfrey 1986). The probability of a
change in a process parameter not being detected is related to the probability of a plot-
ted point falling within the control limits. An OC curve is a measure of the sensitivity
ofa control chart in detecting small changes in process parameters.
The location of the contro! limits influences the probability of a Type I error
which is the probability of incorrectly concluding that a process is out of control when
itis really in control. A Type I error is thus a “false alarm.” For a process in control, a
measure of goodness of the control chart is a large value of the average run length as
discussed in Chapter 6. In this situation, ARL = 1/@ So, choosing a small value of a
and widening the control limits will increase the ARL. For example, if o is .05. the
ARL is 20. If such a small value of ARL is not acceptable and we reduce a9 005 by
making the control limits wider, the ARL increases to 200. This implies that with these
Wider control limits, on average, 1 out of every 200 samples will plot outside the con.
trol limits and indicate an out-of-control condition.
For ap-chart ifthe process proportion nonconforming is some value p, the prob-
ability of a Type II error is
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