6.1.6. What is Process Capability? http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section1/pmc16.
htm
6. Process or Product Monitoring and Control
6.1. Introduction
6.1.6. What is Process Capability?
Process capability compares the output of an in-control process to the specification
limits by using capability indices. The comparison is made by forming the ratio of the
spread between the process specifications (the specification "width") to the spread of
the process values, as measured by 6 process standard deviation units (the process
"width").
Process Capability Indices
A process We are often required to compare the output of a stable process with the process
capability specifications and make a statement about how well the process meets specification.
index uses To do this we compare the natural variability of a stable process with the process
both the specification limits.
process
variability A process where almost all the measurements fall inside the specification limits is a
and the capable process. This can be represented pictorially by the plot below:
process
specifications
to determine
whether the
process is
"capable"
There are several statistics that can be used to measure the capability of a process:
Cp, Cpk, Cpm.
Most capability indices estimates are valid only if the sample size used is 'large
enough'. Large enough is generally thought to be about 50 independent data values.
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6.1.6. What is Process Capability? http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section1/pmc16.htm
The Cp, Cpk, and Cpm statistics assume that the population of data values is normally
distributed. Assuming a two-sided specification, if and are the mean and standard
deviation, respectively, of the normal data and USL, LSL, and T are the upper and
lower specification limits and the target value, respectively, then the population
capability indices are defined as follows:
Definitions of
various
process
capability
indices
Sample Sample estimators for these indices are given below. (Estimators are indicated with a
estimates of "hat" over them).
capability
indices
The estimator for Cpk can also be expressed as Cpk = Cp(1-k), where k is a scaled
distance between the midpoint of the specification range, m, and the process mean, .
Denote the midpoint of the specification range by m = (USL+LSL)/2. The distance
between the process mean, , and the optimum, which is m, is - m, where
. The scaled distance is
(the absolute sign takes care of the case when ). To determine the
estimated value, , we estimate by . Note that .
The estimator for the Cp index, adjusted by the k factor, is
Since , it follows that .
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6.1.6. What is Process Capability? http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section1/pmc16.htm
Plot showing To get an idea of the value of the Cp statistic for varying process widths, consider the
Cp for following plot
varying
process widths
This can be expressed numerically by the table below:
Translating
capability USL - LSL 6 8 10 12
into "rejects" Cp 1.00 1.33 1.66 2.00
Rejects .27% 64 ppm .6 ppm 2 ppb
% of spec used 100 75 60 50
where ppm = parts per million and ppb = parts per billion. Note that the reject figures
are based on the assumption that the distribution is centered at .
We have discussed the situation with two spec. limits, the USL and LSL. This is
known as the bilateral or two-sided case. There are many cases where only the lower
or upper specifications are used. Using one spec limit is called unilateral or
one-sided. The corresponding capability indices are
One-sided
specifications
and the and
corresponding
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6.1.6. What is Process Capability? http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section1/pmc16.htm
capability
indices
where and are the process mean and standard deviation, respectively.
Estimators of Cpu and Cpl are obtained by replacing and by and s, respectively.
The following relationship holds
Cp = (Cpu + Cpl) /2.
This can be represented pictorially by
Note that we also can write:
Cpk = min {Cpl, Cpu}.
Confidence Limits For Capability Indices
Confidence Assuming normally distributed process data, the distribution of the sample
intervals for
indices follows from a Chi-square distribution and and have distributions related to
the non-central t distribution. Fortunately, approximate confidence limits related to
the normal distribution have been derived. Various approximations to the distribution
of have been proposed, including those given by Bissell (1990), and we will use
a normal approximation.
The resulting formulas for confidence limits are given below:
100(1- )% Confidence Limits for Cp
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6.1.6. What is Process Capability? http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section1/pmc16.htm
where
ν = degrees of freedom.
Confidence Approximate 100(1- )% confidence limits for Cpu with sample size n are:
Intervals for
Cpu and Cpl
with z denoting the percent point function of the standard normal distribution. If is
not known, set it to .
Limits for Cpl are obtained by replacing by .
Confidence Zhang et al. (1990) derived the exact variance for the estimator of Cpk as well as an
Interval for approximation for large n. The reference paper is Zhang, Stenback and Wardrop
Cpk (1990), "Interval Estimation of the process capability index", Communications in
Statistics: Theory and Methods, 19(21), 4455-4470.
The variance is obtained as follows:
Let
Then
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6.1.6. What is Process Capability? http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section1/pmc16.htm
Their approximation is given by:
where
The following approximation is commonly used in practice
It is important to note that the sample size should be at least 25 before these
approximations are valid. In general, however, we need n 100 for capability
studies. Another point to observe is that variations are not negligible due to the
randomness of capability indices.
Capability Index Example
An example For a certain process the USL = 20 and the LSL = 8. The observed process average,
= 16, and the standard deviation, s = 2. From this we obtain
This means that the process is capable as long as it is located at the midpoint, m =
(USL + LSL)/2 = 14.
But it doesn't, since = 16. The factor is found by
and
We would like to have at least 1.0, so this is not a good process. If possible,
reduce the variability or/and center the process. We can compute the and
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6.1.6. What is Process Capability? http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section1/pmc16.htm
From this we see that the , which is the smallest of the above indices, is 0.6667.
Note that the formula is the algebraic equivalent of the min{ ,
} definition.
What happens if the process is not approximately normally distributed?
What you can The indices that we considered thus far are based on normality of the process
do with distribution. This poses a problem when the process distribution is not normal.
non-normal Without going into the specifics, we can list some remedies.
data
1. Transform the data so that they become approximately normal. A popular
transformation is the Box-Cox transformation
2. Use or develop another set of indices, that apply to nonnormal distributions.
One statistic is called Cnpk (for non-parametric Cpk). Its estimator is calculated
by
where p(0.995) is the 99.5th percentile of the data and p(.005) is the 0.5th
percentile of the data.
For additional information on nonnormal distributions, see Johnson and Kotz
(1993).
There is, of course, much more that can be said about the case of nonnormal data.
However, if a Box-Cox transformation can be successfully performed, one is
encouraged to use it.
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