Quality monitoring by special charts for highly customized production systems

Abstract

This study presents alternative specials control charts formulation to deal with the flexibility in the quality features due to a mass customization production system. The proposed charts have capacity to detect small shifts from process target faster than traditional approaches for flexible systems, thus improving the quality monitoring process. The proposed charts have been compared with other conventional charts using simulation scenarios generated from Monte Carlo experimentation. Results show that the proposed EWMA chart for flexible systems is the most robust among the evaluated control charts to apply in Mass Customization environment. The performance of the best chart was analyzed in a flexible process and managerial implications were discussed.

Keywords:

• Statistical process control
• Mass customization
• Short-runs
• CuSum
• EWMA