Concurrent Design for Process Quality, Statistical Tolerance, and SPC

Abstract

The rapid response to the requirements of customers and markets promotes the concurrent engineering (CE) technique in product and process design. The decision making for process quality target, SPC method, sampling plan, and control chart parameter design can be done at the stage of process quality plan based on historical data and process knowledge database. Therefore, it is a reasonable trend to introduce the concepts and achievements on process quality evaluation and process capability analysis, CE, and SPC techniques into process plan and tolerance design. A new systematic method for concurrent design of process quality, statistical tolerance (ST), and control chart is presented based on a NSFC research program. A set of standardized process quality indices (PQIs) for variables is introduced for meeting the measurement and evaluation to process yield, process centering, and quality loss. This index system that has relatively strong compatibility and adaptability is based on raisonne grading by using the series of preferred numbers and arithmetical progression. The expected process quality based on this system can be assured by a standardized interface between PQIs and SPC, that is, quality-oriented statistical tolerance zone. A quality-oriented ST and SPC approach that quantitatively specifies what a desired process is and how to assure it will realize the optimal control for a process toward a predetermined quality target.

Keywords:

• Concurrent design
• Process quality
• Statistical process control
• Statistical tolerance

Mathematics Subject Classification:

• 62P30 Applications in engineering and industry

Acknowledgment

This research is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under the Grant #50175066 and Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province under the Grand#Y2005F12.

Notes

Note: The values of ARL in bold are the preferred ARL₀ and ARL₁ with relative δ range and L _λ, λ combinations.