Control Charts

Submitted by,

J. NELSON (3510920075)

V. NITTYANANDAM (3510920078)

C.S. PRASAD KUMAR (3510920088)

J. RAJESH MANICKAM (3510920100)

D. RAM KUMAR (3510920109)

Control charts

Control charts, also known as Shewhart charts or process-behaviour

charts, in statistical process control are tools used to determine whether or not a
manufacturing or business process is in a state of statistical control.

If analysis of the control chart indicates that the process is currently under
control (i.e. is stable, with variation only coming from sources common to the
process) then data from the process can be used to predict the future
performance of the process. If the chart indicates that the process being
monitored is not in control, analysis of the chart can help determine the sources
of variation, which can then be eliminated to bring the process back into
control. A control chart is a specific kind of run chart that allows significant
change to be differentiated from the natural variability of the process.
The control chart can be seen as part of an objective and disciplined approach
that enables correct decisions regarding control of the process, including
whether or not to change process control parameters. Process parameters should
never be adjusted for a process that is in control, as this will result in degraded
process performance.
History
The control chart was invented by Walter A. Shewhart while working for Bell
Labs in the 1920s. The company's engineers had been seeking to improve the
reliability of their telephony transmission systems. Because amplifiers and other
equipment had to be buried underground, there was a business need to reduce
the frequency of failures and repairs. By 1920 they had already realized the
importance of reducing variation in a manufacturing process. Moreover, they
had realized that continual process-adjustment in reaction to non-conformance
actually increased variation and degraded quality. Shewhart framed the problem
in terms of Common- and special-causes of variation and, on May 16, 1924,
wrote an internal memo introducing the control chart as a tool for distinguishing
between the two. Dr. Shewhart's boss, George Edwards, recalled: "Dr. Shewhart
prepared a little memorandum only about a page in length. About a third of that
page was given over to a simple diagram which we would all recognize today as
a schematic control chart. That diagram, and the short text which preceded and
followed it, set forth all of the essential principles and considerations which are
involved in what we know today as process quality control."  Shewhart stressed
that bringing a production process into a state of statistical control, where there
is only common-causevariation, and keeping it in control, is necessary to predict
future output and to manage a process economically.
Dr. Shewhart created the basis for the control chart and the concept of a state of
statistical control by carefully designed experiments. While Dr. Shewhart drew
from pure mathematical statistical theories, he understood data from physical
processes typically produce a "normal distribution curve" (a Gaussian
distribution, also commonly referred to as a "bell curve"). He discovered that
observed variation in manufacturing data did not always behave the same way
as data in nature (Brownian motion of particles). Dr. Shewhart concluded that
while every process displays variation, some processes display controlled
variation that is natural to the process, while others display uncontrolled
variation that is not present in the process causal system at all times.
In 1924 or 1925, Shewhart's innovation came to the attention of W. Edwards
Deming, then working at the Hawthorne facility. Deming later worked at
the United States Department of Agriculture and then became the mathematical
advisor to the United States Census Bureau. Over the next half a
century, Deming became the foremost champion and proponent of Shewhart's
work. After the defeat ofJapan at the close of World War II, Deming served as
statistical consultant to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. His
ensuing involvement in Japanese life, and long career as an industrial consultant
there, spread Shewhart's thinking, and the use of the control chart, widely in
Japanese manufacturing industry throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Chart details
A control chart consists of:

 Points representing a statistic (e.g., a mean, range, proportion) of

measurements of a quality characteristic in samples taken from the process at
different times [the data]
 The mean of this statistic using all the samples is calculated (e.g., the
mean of the means, mean of the ranges, mean of the proportions)
 A center line is drawn at the value of the mean of the statistic
 The standard error (e.g., standard deviation/sqrt(n) for the mean) of the
statistic is also calculated using all the samples
 Upper and lower control limits (sometimes called "natural process
limits") that indicate the threshold at which the process output is considered
statistically 'unlikely' are drawn typically at 3 standard errors from the center
line
The chart may have other optional features, including:

 Upper and lower warning limits, drawn as separate lines, typically two
standard errors above and below the center line
 Division into zones, with the addition of rules governing frequencies of
observations in each zone
 Annotation with events of interest, as determined by the Quality Engineer
in charge of the process's quality

Chart usage
If the process is in control, all points will plot within the control limits. Any
observations outside the limits, or systematic patterns within, suggest the
introduction of a new (and likely unanticipated) source of variation, known as
a special-cause variation. Since increased variation means increased quality
costs, a control chart "signaling" the presence of a special-cause requires
immediate investigation.
This makes the control limits very important decision aids. The control limits
tell you about process behavior and have no intrinsic relationship to
any specification targets or engineering tolerance. In practice, the process mean
(and hence the center line) may not coincide with the specified value (or target)
of the quality characteristic because the process' design simply can't deliver the
process characteristic at the desired level.
Control charts limit specification limits or targets because of the tendency of
those involved with the process (e.g., machine operators) to focus on
performing to specification when in fact the least-cost course of action is to
keep process variation as low as possible. Attempting to make a process whose
natural center is not the same as the target perform to target specification
increases process variability and increases costs significantly and is the cause of
much inefficiency in operations. Process capability studies do examine the
relationship between the natural process limits (the control limits) and
specifications, however.
The purpose of control charts is to allow simple detection of events that are
indicative of actual process change. This simple decision can be difficult where
the process characteristic is continuously varying; the control chart provides
statistically objective criteria of change. When change is detected and
considered good its cause should be identified and possibly become the new
way of working, where the change is bad then its cause should be identified and
eliminated.
The purpose in adding warning limits or subdividing the control chart into zones
is to provide early notification if something is amiss. Instead of immediately
launching a process improvement effort to determine whether special causes are
present, the Quality Engineer may temporarily increase the rate at which
samples are taken from the process output until it's clear that the process is truly
in control. Note that with three sigma limits, one expects to be signaled
approximately once out of every 370 points on average, just due to common-
causes.
Choice of limits

Assumptions underlying Control Charts

The two important assumptions are:

1. The measurement-function (e.g. the mean), that is used to monitor the

process parameter, is distributed according to a normal distribution. In
practice, if your data seem very far from meeting this assumption, try to
transform them.
2. Measurements are independent of each other.

The purpose of control charts

The success of Shewhart's approach is based on the idea that no matter how well
the process is designed, there exists a certain amount of nature variability in
output measurements.
When the variation in process quality is due to random causes alone, the process
is said to be in-control. If the process variation includes both random and
special causes of variation, the process is said to be out-of-control.

The control chart is supposed to detect the presence of special causes of

variation.

In its basic form, the control chart is a plot of some function of process
measurements against time. The points that are plotted on the graph are
compared to a pair of control limits. A point that exceeds the control limits
signals an alarm.

An alarm signaled by a control chart may indicate that special causes of

variation are present, and some action should be taken, ranging from taking a
re-check sample to the stopping of a production line in order to trace and
eliminate these causes. On the other hand, an alarm may be a false one, when in
practice no change has occurred in the process. The design of control charts is a
compromise between the risks of not detecting real changes and of false alarms.

Shewhart set 3-sigma (3-standard error) limits on the following basis.

 The coarse result of Chebyshev's inequality that, for any probability

distribution, the probability of an outcome greater than k standard
deviations from the mean is at most 1/k2.
 The finer result of the Vysochanskii-Petunin inequality, that for
any unimodal probability distribution, the probability of an outcome greater
than k standard deviations from the mean is at most 4/(9k2).
 The empirical investigation of sundry probability distributions reveals
that at least 99% of observations occurred within three standard deviations of
the mean.
Shewhart summarized the conclusions by saying:
fact that the criterion which we happen to use has a fine ancestry in highbrow
statistical theorems does not justify its use. Such justification must come from
empirical evidence that it works. As the practical engineer might say, the proof
of the pudding is in the eating.
Though he initially experimented with limits based on probability distributions,
Shewhart ultimately wrote:
Some of the earliest attempts to characterize a state of statistical control were
inspired by the belief that there existed a special form of frequency
function f and it was early argued that the normal law characterized such a state.
When the normal law was found to be inadequate, then generalized functional
forms were tried. Today, however, all hopes of finding a unique functional
form f are blasted.
The control chart is intended as a heuristic. Deming insisted that it is not
a hypothesis test and is not motivated by the Neyman-Pearson lemma. He
contended that the disjoint nature of population andsampling frame in most
industrial situations compromised the use of conventional statistical
techniques. Deming's intention was to seek insights into the cause system of a
process ...under a wide range of unknowable circumstances, future and past .He
claimed that, under such conditions, 3-sigma limits provided . a rational and
economic guide to minimum economic loss... from the two errors

1. Ascribe a variation or a mistake to a special cause when in fact the cause

belongs to the system (common cause). (Also known as a Type I error)
2. Ascribe a variation or a mistake to the system (common causes) when in
fact the cause was special. (Also known as a Type II error)
[edit]Calculation of standard deviation
As for the calculation of control limits, the standard deviation (error) required is
that of the common-cause variation in the process. Hence, the usual estimator,
in terms of sample variance, is not used as this estimates the total squared-error
loss from both common- and special-causes of variation.
An alternative method is to use the relationship between the range of a sample
and its standard deviation derived by Leonard H. C. Tippett, an estimator which
tends to be less influenced by the extreme observations which typify special-
causes.
Rules for detecting signal
The most common sets are:

 The Western Electric rules

 The Wheeler rules (equivalent to the Western Electric zone tests[5])
 The Nelson rules
There has been particular controversy as to how long a run of observations, all
on the same side of the centre line, should count as a signal, with 6, 7, 8 and 9
all being advocated by various writers.
The most important principle for choosing a set of rules is that the choice be
made before the data is inspected. Choosing rules once the data have been seen
tends to increase the Type I error rate owing to testing effects suggested by the
data.
Alternative bases
In 1935, the British Standards Institution, under the influence of Egon
Pearson and against Shewhart's spirit, adopted control charts, replacing 3-
sigma limits with limits based on percentiles of thenormal distribution. This
move continues to be represented by John Oakland and others but has been
widely deprecated by writers in the Shewhart-Deming tradition.
Performance of control charts
When a point falls outside of the limits established for a given control chart,
those responsible for the underlying process are expected to determine whether
a special cause has occurred. If one has, it is appropriate to determine if the
results with the special cause are better than or worse than results from common
causes alone. If worse, then that cause should be eliminated if possible. If better,
it may be appropriate to intentionally retain the special cause within the system
producing the results.
It is known that even when a process is in control (that is, no special causes are
present in the system), there is approximately a 0.27% probability of a point
exceeding 3-sigma control limits. Since the control limits are evaluated each
time a point is added to the chart, it readily follows that every control chart will
eventually signal the possible presence of a special cause, even though one may
not have actually occurred. For a Shewhart control chart using 3-sigma limits,
this false alarm occurs on average once every 1/0.0027 or 370.4 observations.
Therefore, the in-control average run length (or in-control ARL) of a Shewhart
chart is 370.4.
Meanwhile, if a special cause does occur, it may not be of sufficient magnitude
for the chart to produce an immediate alarm condition. If a special cause occurs,
one can describe that cause by measuring the change in the mean and/or
variance of the process in question. When those changes are quantified, it is
possible to determine the out-of-control ARL for the chart.
It turns out that Shewhart charts are quite good at detecting large changes in the
process mean or variance, as their out-of-control ARLs are fairly short in these
cases. However, for smaller changes (such as a 1- or 2-sigma change in the
mean), the Shewhart chart does not detect these changes efficiently. Other types
of control charts have been developed, such as the EWMA chart and
theCUSUM chart, which detect smaller changes more efficiently by making use
of information from observations collected prior to the most recent data point.
criticisms
Several authors have criticised the control chart on the grounds that it violates
the likelihood principle.] However, the principle is itself controversial and
supporters of control charts further argue that, in general, it is impossible to
specify a likelihood function for a process not in statistical control, especially
where knowledge about the cause system of the process is weak.
Some authors have criticised the use of average run lengths (ARLs) for
comparing control chart performance, because that average usually follows
a geometric distribution, which has high variability and difficulties.

An Example

To give you a feel of this statistical terminology, imagine a process that

produces soap bars. The production manager wants to monitor the mean weight
of soap bars produced on the line. The target value of a the weight of a single
soap bar is 100 gm. It is also known that an estimate of the weight standard-
deviation for a single soap bar, is 5 gm.

Daily samples of 10 bars are taken, during a stable period of the process. For
each sample, the weights are recorded, and their mean/average is computed. The
sample means are estimates of the process mean.

1. The monitored parameter is the process mean.

2. The center line in this case will be equal to 100 gm (the target).
3. The points on the plot will be the sample means (where each sample
consists of 10 measurements).
4. The control limits are given by 100 ± 3 · 5 / root(10)

Sensitizing rules for control charts

The American Standard is based on "three-sigma" control limits (corresponding
to 0.27% of false alarms), while the British Standard uses "3.09 sigma" limits
(corresponding to 0.2% of false alarms). In both cases it is assumed that a
normal distribution underlies the relevant estimators.

It has been shown that Shewhart-type charts are efficient in detecting medium to
large shifts, but are insensitive to small shifts. One attempt to increase the
power of Shewhart-type charts is by adding supplementary stopping rules based
on runs. The most popular stopping rules were suggested by the "Western
Electric Company" ("WECO"). These rules supplement the ordinary rule: "One
point exceeds the control limits". Here are the most popular Western Electric
rules:

 2 of 3 consecutive points fall outside warning (2-sigma) limits, but within

control (3-sigma) limits.
 4 of 5 consecutive points fall beyond 1-sigma limits, but within control
limits.
 8 consecutive points fall on one side of the centerline.