An Economic Analysis for Product and Process Design

ABSTRACT

Industry competitiveness requires the best possible quality–price combination; therefore, cost analysis is usually required at the design stages. Off–line quality control methods are conducted at the product and process design stages to improve manufacturing costs and quality of the product. An economic analysis is proposed in this article that can be carried out along with the known parameter design methods. The economic analysis in the experimental design does not add experimental costs and shows potential savings. The model minimizes the total expected quality cost, which includes the cost of using a set of factor levels and its expected quality loss.

Keywords:

• Economic analysis
• Experimental design
• Expected cost
• Orthogonal array
• Product design
• Process design
• Quality loss function

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Suggestions by my colleagues Jöns Sánchez, Rosario Mesino, and Ana Luisa Espinosa have clarified some of the issues involving the project. In particular, Jöns Sánchez helped greatly with his computing abilities.