Diagnosis of Multivariate Control Chart Signal Based on Dummy Variable Regression Technique

Abstract

It is common to monitor several correlated quality characteristics using the Hotelling's T ² statistic. However, T ² confounds the location shift with scale shift and consequently it is often difficult to determine the factors responsible for out of control signal in terms of the process mean vector and/or process covariance matrix. In this paper, we propose a diagnostic procedure called ‘D-technique’ to detect the nature of shift. For this purpose, two sets of regression equations, each consisting of regression of a variable on the remaining variables, are used to characterize the ‘structure’ of the ‘in control’ process and that of ‘current’ process. To determine the sources responsible for an out of control state, it is shown that it is enough to compare these two structures using the dummy variable multiple regression equation. The proposed method is operationally simpler and computationally advantageous over existing diagnostic tools. The technique is illustrated with various examples.     

Economic-statistical design of synthetic double sampling T2 chart

Abstract

An economic-statistical design of the synthetic double sampling (synDS) T² chart is presented in this study. The cost function is minimized to obtain the optimal design parameters of the synDS T² chart by incorporating the statistical constraints or the constraints on the average number of samples. An example is provided and a sensitivity analysis is conducted to study the effect of model parameters on the optimal solution of the design. The numerical comparison shows that the synDS T² chart performs better than the synthetic T² chart and the multivariate exponentially weighted moving average chart, in terms of the cost.     

Maximum Value of Hotelling's T 2 Statistics Based on the Successive Differences Covariance Matrix Estimator

In statistical process control applications, the multivariate T ² control chart based on Hotelling's T ² statistic is useful for detecting the presence of special causes of variation. In particular, use of the T ² statistic based on the successive differences covariance matrix estimator has been shown to be very effective in detecting the presence of a sustained step or ramp shift in the mean vector. However, the exact distribution of this statistic is unknown. In this article, we derive the maximum value of the T ² statistic based on the successive differences covariance matrix estimator. This distributional property is crucial for calculating an approximate upper control limit of a T ² control chart based on successive differences, as described in Williams et al. (2006 Williams , J. D. , Woodall , W. H. , Birch , J. B. , Sullivan , J. H. ( 2006 ). On the distribution of T ² statistics based on successive differences . J. Qual. Technol. 38 : 217 – 229 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).     

Mixed multivariate EWMA-CUSUM control charts for an improved process monitoring

Multivariate exponential weighted moving average and cumulative sum charts are the most common memory type multivariate control charts. They make use of the present and past information to detect small shifts in the process parameter(s). In this article, we propose two new multivariate control charts using a mixed version of their design setups. The plotting statistics of the proposed charts are based on the cumulative sum of the multivariate exponentially weighted moving averages. The performances of these schemes are evaluated in terms of average run length. The proposals are compared with their existing counterparts, including HotellingT², MCUSUM, MEWMA, and MC1 charts. An application example is also presented for practical considerations using a real dataset.     

ON THE ECONOMIC DESIGN OF MULTIVARIATE CONTROL CHARTS

ABSTRACT

It is an increasingly common practice to monitor several related quality characteristics of a product or process using a multivariate control chart procedure. Several types of multivariate control charts, including Hotelling's χ ² and T ² control charts, have been developed in attempts to improve monitoring by using the correlation structure that exists between quality characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the assumptions made regarding the out-of-control process shift in the economic design of multivariate control charts and to address their consequences. We study the average run length (ARL) properties of the χ ² control chart using a numerical example and show that this chart can perform ineffectively under the assumed out-of-control conditions when designed using the economic approach. Following Healy,[1] Healy, J.D. 1987. A Note on the Multivariate CUSUM Procedures. Technometrics, 29: 409–412. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] we offer an alternative procedure that has improved ARL properties and overall performance. These results can be important to researchers and practitioners who are interested in using the economic design of multivariate control procedures.     

A comparison study of effectiveness and robustness of robust economic designs of T2 chart using genetic algorithm

ABSTRACT

Recently, researchers have tried to design the T² chart economically to achieve the minimum possible quality cost; however, when T² chart is designed, it is important to consider multiple scenarios. This research presents the robust economic designs of the T² chart where there is more than one scenario. An illustrative example is used to demonstrate the effect of the model parameters on the optimal designs. The genetic algorithm optimization method is employed to obtain the optimal designs. Simulation studies show that the robust economic designs of T² chart are more effective than traditional economic design in practice.     

Bivariate copulas on the Hotelling's T2 control chart

In this paper, we propose five types of copulas on the Hotelling's T² control chart when observations are from exponential distribution and use the Monte Carlo simulation to compare the performance of the control chart, which is based on the Average Run Length (ARL) for each copula. Five types of copulas function for specifying dependence between random variables are used and measured by Kendall's tau. The results show that the copula approach can be fitted the observation and we can use copula as an option for application on Hotelling's T² control chart.     

Identifying the time of a step change with multivariate single control charts

Change point estimation procedures simplify the efforts to search for and identify special causes in multivariate statistical process monitoring. After a signal is generated by the simultaneously used control charts or a single control chart, add-on change point procedure estimates the time of the change. In this study, multivariate joint change point estimation performance for simultaneous monitoring of both location and dispersion is compared under the assumption that various single charts are used to monitor the process. The change detection performance for several structural changes for the mean vector and covariance matrix is also discussed. It is concluded that choice of the control chart to obtain a signal may affect the change point detection performance.     

A Multivariate Synthetic Control Chart for Monitoring Process Mean Vector

In this article, a multivariate synthetic control chart is developed for monitoring the mean vector of a normally distributed process. The proposed chart is a combination of the Hotelling's T ² chart and Conforming Run Length chart. The operation, design, and performance of the chart are described. Average run length comparisons between some other existing control charts and the synthetic T ² chart are presented. They indicate that the synthetic T ² chart outperforms Hotelling's T ² chart and T ² chart with supplementary runs rules.     

Monitoring and change-point estimation for spline-modeled non-linear profiles in phase II

In some applications of statistical quality control, quality of a process or a product is best characterized by a functional relationship between a response variable and one or more explanatory variables. This relationship is referred to as a profile. In certain cases, the quality of a process or a product is better described by a non-linear profile which does not follow a specific parametric model. In these circumstances, nonparametric approaches with greater flexibility in modeling the complicated profiles are adopted. In this research, the spline smoothing method is used to model a complicated non-linear profile and the Hotelling T² control chart based on the spline coefficients is used to monitor the process. After receiving an out-of-control signal, a maximum likelihood estimator is employed for change point estimation. The simulation studies, which include both global and local shifts, provide appropriate evaluation of the performance of the proposed estimation and monitoring procedure. The results indicate that the proposed method detects large global shifts while it is very sensitive in detecting local shifts.     

Identifying Variables Contributing to Outliers in Phase I

When a process is monitored with a T ² control chart in a Phase II setting, the MYT decomposition is a valuable diagnostic tool for interpreting signals in terms of the process variables. The decomposition splits a signaling T ² statistic into independent components that can be associated with either individual variables or groups of variables. Since these components are T ² statistics with known distributions, they can be used to determine which of the process variable(s) contribute to the signal. However, this procedure cannot be applied directly to Phase I since the distributions of the individual components are unknown. In this article, we develop the MYT decomposition procedure for a Phase I operation, when monitoring a random sample of individual observations and identifying outliers. We use a relationship between the T ² statistic in Phase I with the corresponding T ² statistic resulting when an observation is omitted from this sample to derive the distributions of these components and demonstrate the Phase I application of the MYT decomposition.     

DDMA-charts: Nonparametric multivariate moving average control charts based on data depth

Summary: This paper studies the DDMA–chart, a data depth based moving–average control chart for monitoring multivariate data. This chart is nonparametric and it can detect simultaneously location and scale changes in the process. It improves upon the existing r– and Q–chart in the efficiency of detecting location changes. Both theoretical justifications and simulation studies are provided. Comparisons with some existing multivariate control charts via simulation results are also provided. Some applications of the DDMA–chart to the analysis of airline performance data (collected by the FAA) are demonstrated. The results indicate that the DDMA–chart is an effective nonparametric multivariate control chart.*Research supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Aviation Administration. The discussion on aviation safety in this paper reects the views of the authors, who are solely responsible for the accuracy of the analysis results presented herein, and does not necessarily reect the official view or policy of the FAA. The dataset used in this paper has been partially masked in order to protect confidentiality.     

The Prediction Sum of Squares as a General Measure for Regression Diagnostics

Statistics that usually accompany the regression model do not provide insight into the quality of the data or the potential influence of the individual observations on the estimates. In this study, the Q² statistic is used as a criterion for detecting influential observations or outliers. The statistic is derived from the jackknifed residuals, the squared sum of which is generally known as the prediction sum of squares or PRESS. This article compares R ² with Q² and suggests that the latter be used as part of the data-quality check. It is shown, for two separate data sets obtained from regional cost of living and U.S. food industry studies, that in the presence of outliers the Q² statistic can be negative, because it is sensitive to the choice of regressors and the inclusion of influential observations. Once the outliers are dropped from the sample, the discrepancy between Q² and R ² values is negligible.     

New robust estimators for detecting non-random patterns in multivariate control charts: a simulation approach

In the past decade, different robust estimators have been proposed by several researchers to improve the ability to detect non-random patterns such as trend, process mean shift, and outliers in multivariate control charts. However, the use of the sample mean vector and the mean square successive difference matrix in the T ² control chart is sensitive in detecting process mean shift or trend but less sensitive in detecting outliers. On the other hand, the minimum volume ellipsoid (MVE) estimators in the T ² control chart are sensitive in detecting multiple outliers but less sensitive in detecting trend or process mean shift. Therefore, new robust estimators using both merits of the mean square successive difference matrix and the MVE estimators are developed to modify Hotelling's T ² control chart. To compare the detection performance among various control charts, a simulation approach for establishing control limits and calculating signal probabilities is provided as well. Our simulation results show that a multivariate control chart using the new robust estimators can achieve a well-balanced sensitivity in detecting the above-mentioned non-random patterns. Finally, three numerical examples further demonstrate the usefulness of our new robust estimators.     

Economic and economic-statistical designs of the T2 control charts with SVSSI sampling scheme

Recent studies have shown that the adaptive T² chart with two different sampling interval and three sample sizes (SVSSI) shows a good performance in detecting small to large shifts in the process mean. This paper investigates the economic and economic statistical designs of the SVSSI T² charts. We use the Markov chain approach to developing the cost model proposed by Costa and Rahim (Journal of applied statistics 2001; 28: 875–885). A genetic algorithm approach is used to find the optimal solutions. Using numerical examples, we illustrate the performance of the proposed model and compare the statistical, economic, and economic statistical designs of the SVSSI T² chart with respect to the economic and statistical criteria. Furthermore, we compare the performance of the SVSSI T² chart with the other T² control schemes.     

An extension of Banerjee and Rahim model in economic and economic statistical designs for multivariate quality characteristics under Burr XII distribution

The design parameters of the economic and economic statistical designs of control charts depend on the distribution of process failure mechanism or shock model. So far, only a small number of failure distributions, such as exponential, gamma, and Weibull with fixed or increasing hazard rates, have been used as a shock model in the economic and economic statistical designs of the Hotelling T² control charts. Due to both theoretical and practical aspects, the lifetime of the process under study may not follow a distribution with fixed or increasing hazard rate. A proper alternative for this situation may be the Burr distribution, in which the hazard rate can be fixed, increasing, decreasing, single mode, or even U-shaped. In this research article, economic and economic statistical designs of the Hotelling T² control charts under the Burr XII shock models under two uniform and non uniform sampling schemes were proposed, constructed, and compared. The obtained design models were implemented by a numerical example, and a sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the effect of changing parameters of shock model distribution on the optimum values of the proposed design models. The results showed that first the proposed designs under non uniform sampling scheme perform better and second the optimum values of the designs are not significantly sensitive to changing of the Burr XII distribution parameters. We showed that the obtained design models are also true for the beta Burr XII shock model.     

Average run length comparison of multivariate control charts

In this paper we use Monte Carlo Simulation methodology to compare the effectiveness of five multivariate quality control methods, namely Hotelling T ², Multivariate Shewhart Char, Discriminant Analysis, Decomposition Method, and Multivariate Ridge Residual Chart-developed by Authors-, for controlling the mean vector in a multivariate process. P-dimensional multivariate normal data generated using different covariance structures. Various amount of shift in the mean vector is induced and the resulting Average Run Length (ARL) is computed. The effectiveness of each method with regard to ARL is discussed.     

Bootstrap-Based T 2 Multivariate Control Charts

Control charts have been used effectively for years to monitor processes and detect abnormal behaviors. However, most control charts require a specific distribution to establish their control limits. The bootstrap method is a nonparametric technique that does not rely on the assumption of a parametric distribution of the observed data. Although the bootstrap technique has been used to develop univariate control charts to monitor a single process, no effort has been made to integrate the effectiveness of the bootstrap technique with multivariate control charts. In the present study, we propose a bootstrap-based multivariate T ² control chart that can efficiently monitor a process when the distribution of observed data is nonnormal or unknown. A simulation study was conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed control chart and compare it with a traditional Hotelling's T ² control chart and the kernel density estimation (KDE)-based T ² control chart. The results showed that the proposed chart performed better than the traditional T ² control chart and performed comparably with the KDE-based T ² control chart. Furthermore, we present a case study to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed control chart to real situations.     

Comparison of normal variance estimators under multiple criteria and towards a compromise estimator

For estimating a normal variance under the squared error loss function it is well known that the best affine (location and scale) equivariant estimator, which is better than the maximum likelihood estimator as well as the unbiased estimator, is also inadmissible. The improved estimators, e.g., stein type, brown type and Brewster–Zidek type, are all scale equivariant but not location invariant. Lately, a good amount of research has been done to compare the improved estimators in terms of risk, but comparatively less attention had been paid to compare these estimators in terms of the Pitman nearness criterion (PNC) as well as the stochastic domination criterion (SDC). In this paper, we have undertaken a comprehensive study to compare various variance estimators in terms of the PNC and the SDC, which has been long overdue. Finally, using the results for risk, the PNC and the SDC, we propose a compromise estimator (sort of a robust estimator) which appears to work ‘well’ under all the criteria discussed above.     

Hotelling’s T2 control chart with double warning lines

Recent studies have shown that the T ² control chart with variable sampling intervals (VSI) and/or variable sample sizes (VSS) detects process shifts faster than the traditional T ² chart. This article extends these studies for processes that are monitored with VSI and VSS using double warning lines (T ² —DWL). It is assumed that the length of time the process remains in control has exponential distribution. The properties of T ² —DWL chart are obtained using Markov chains. The results show that the T ² —DWL chart is quicker than VSI and/or VSS charts in detecting almost all shifts in the process mean.