The joint determination of specification limits, process mean, and economic manufacturing quantity

Abstract

This study proposes a modified economic manufacturing quantity (EMQ) model with deteriorating production process. Assume that the quality characteristic of the product is normally distributed. Consider the unstable production process with positive shift and an age-dependent positive drift while process variance increases. The target value of product characteristic is considered to be equal to its specification center and Taguchi’s symmetric quadratic quality loss function is applied to evaluate the product quality. The specification limits, process mean, and EMQ are jointly determined by minimizing the total expected cost of product per unit time under the specified process capability index C_pm value. A solution procedure is devised to find the optimal solution for modified EMQ model and the sensitivity analysis of key parameters is conducted to investigate the effect on the optimal solution. Numerical results show that the expected total cost of product per unit time is significantly influenced by the process capability index, the quality loss coefficient, the production rate, the demand rate, and process standard deviation.

Keywords:

• Specification limits
• process mean
• economic manufacturing quantity (EMQ)
• process capability index
• Taguchi’s symmetric quadratic quality loss function
• deteriorating production process