A Quality Control Approach of PVC Gloves Based on the Integration of SPC and EPC

Abstract

Parameters in the production process of PVC gloves, such as production cycle, oven temperature, temperature, and viscosity of feed liquids are critical to the final quality of gloves. The dosing of feed liquids and plasticization of gloves are all controlled manually, and the viscosities of feed liquids and average oven temperature cannot be exactly regulated; those result in the degradation of final products and unreliability of the process. This article conducted studies on reliability enhancement of glove quality—an integrated control policy based on SPC and EPC was raised to minimize the process fluctuation, stabilize the output quality, and finally improve the process reliability. Using SPC method to eliminate the assignable factors in the process, when the process is under control, the EPC method was applied to make the process parameters closer to the target values which were decided through an inverse model of the process. The theory and methods were verified in the case study of PVC production control.

Keywords:

• ANN
• Inverse model
• Principal component analysis
• SPC/EPC

Mathematics Subject Classification:

• 62G86
• 62P30

Acknowledgment

This research is supported by National Natural Science Foundation Research Program of China (Grant No. 71071019). The authors would like to thank all members of the Industrial Engineering Laboratory of Beijing Institute of Technology for discussions.