A note on production yield measure for multiple lines

Abstract

In today’s globally competitive environment, processes involving multiple manufacturing lines are quite common due to economies of scale considerations. Production yield measure indices C_pk and C_pu are the most popular yield-based indices and have been widely used in manufacturing industries for two-sided and one-sided specification limits, respectively. In this paper, two production yield indices for multiple lines and are considered and the approximate distributions of two natural estimators and are derived. For the convenience of industry applications, the lower confidence bounds and critical values are provided.

Keywords:

• Capability index
• critical value
• lower confidence bound
• multiple manufacturing lines
• production yield

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Notes on contributors

W. L. Pearn received the Ph.D. degree in operations research from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. He is a Professor of operations research and quality assurance with National Chiao-Tung University (NCTU), Hsinchu, Taiwan. He was with Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, USA, as a Quality Research Scientist before joining NCTU. His current research interests include process capability, network optimization, and production management. His publications have appeared in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C, Journal of Quality Technology, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Operations Research Letters, Omega, Networks and International Journal of Productions Research.

Y. T. Tai received the Ph.D. degree in industrial engineering and management from National Chiao-Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. She is currently an associate Professor with the Department of Information Management, Kainan University, Taoyuan, Taiwan. Her current research interests include process capability indices, scheduling, and semiconductor manufacturing management.

C. H. Wu received the Ph.D. degree in industrial engineering and management from National Chiao-Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. His current research interests include queueing theory, optimization theory, process capability index, and applied statistics.