Monitoring manufacturing quality for multiple Li-BPIC processes based on capability index C-pmk

Abstract

The multi-process performance analysis chart (MPPAC) based on process capability indices has been developed to analyse the manufacturing performance for multiple processes, which conveys critical information regarding the departure of the process mean from the target value, process variability, capability levels, which provides a guideline of directions for capability improvement. Existing MPPAC researches have plotted the sample estimates of the process indices on the chart. Conclusions were then made on whether processes meet the capability requirement and directions need to be taken for further quality improvement. Such an approach is highly unreliable since the sample point estimate is a random variable with no assessment of the sampling errors. Further, existing MPPAC researches only considered one single sample. Current quality control practice is to estimate process capability using multiple groups of control chart samples rather than one single sample. In this paper, we propose the C-pmk MPPAC combining the accuracy index C-a to access the performance of multiple manufacturing processes. Distributions of the estimated C-pmk and C-a are derived based on multiple control chart samples, and accurate lower confidence bounds are calculated. The lower confidence bounds of the estimated Cpmk and Ca are then employed to the MPPAC to provide reliable capability grouping for those multiple processes. A real-world example is presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed MPPAC.