A Bayesian procedure for assessing process performance based on the third-generation capability index

Abstract

Capability indices that qualify process potential and process performance are practical tools for successful quality improvement activities and quality program implementation. Most existing methods to assess process capability were derived on the basis of the traditional frequentist point of view. This paper considers the problem of estimating and testing process capability based on the third-generation capability index C _pmk from the Bayesian point of view. We first derive the posterior probability p for the process under investigation is capable. The one-sided credible interval, a Bayesian analog of the classical lower confidence interval, can be obtained to assess process performance. To investigate the effectiveness of the derived results, a series of simulation was undertaken. The results indicate that the performance of the proposed Bayesian approach depends strongly on the value of ξ=(μ−T)/σ. It performs very well with the accurate coverage rate when μ is sufficiently far from T. In those cases, they have the same acceptable performance even though the sample size n is as small as 25.

Keywords:

• Bayesian approach
• lower confidence bound
• process capability
• posterior probability
• sampling distribution