THE CONTROL CHART FOR INDIVIDUAL OBSERVATIONS FROM A MULTIVARIATE NON-NORMAL DISTRIBUTION

The Hotelling's T²statistic has been used in constructing a multivariate control chart for individual observations. In Phase II operations, the distribution of the T²statistic is related to the F distribution provided the underlying population is multivariate normal. Thus, the upper control limit (UCL) is proportional to a percentile of the F distribution. However, if the process data show sufficient evidence of a marked departure from multivariate normality, the UCL based on the F distribution may be very inaccurate. In such situations, it will usually be helpful to determine the UCL based on the percentile of the estimated distribution for T². In this paper, we use a kernel smoothing technique to estimate the distribution of the T²statistic as well as of the UCL of the T²chart, when the process data are taken from a multivariate non-normal distribution. Through simulations, we examine the sample size requirement and the in-control average run length of the T²control chart for sample observations taken from a multivariate exponential distribution. The paper focuses on the Phase II situation with individual observations.     

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.     

A Double Multivariate Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (dMEWMA) Control Chart for a Process Location Monitoring

A new control scheme, dMEWMA, for detecting shifts in the mean vector of multivariately normally distributed quality characteristics is presented. It is shown that the ARL performance of dMEWMA depends on the mean and variance-covariance matricies only through the non-centrality parameter value. Through Monte Carlo simulations, the performance of dMEWMA for detecting various shifts is compared to the competing control schemes, MEWMA and Hotelling's χ². It is concluded that dMEWMA outperforms MEWMA and Hotelling's χ² control schemes for small and larger shifts. In comparison to MEWMA control schemes, dMEWMA schemes are optimal for larger values of the smoothing parameter λ and perform much better for very small shifts in the process mean. Finally, an example to illustrate the construction of the dMEWMA control scheme is introduced.     

A new multivariate CUSUM chart using principal components with a revision of Crosier's chart

In this article, we introduce a new multivariate cumulative sum chart, where the target mean shift is assumed to be a weighted sum of principal directions of the population covariance matrix. This chart provides an attractive performance in terms of average run length (ARL) for large-dimensional data and it also compares favorably to existing multivariate charts including Crosier's benchmark chart with updated values of the upper control limit and the associated ARL function. In addition, Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to assess the accuracy of the well-known Siegmund's approximation of the average ARL function when observations are normal distributed. As a byproduct of the article, we provide updated values of upper control limits and the associated ARL function for Crosier's multivariate CUSUM chart.     

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.     

CUSUM Control Charts for Multivariate Poisson Distribution

A cumulative sum control chart for multivariate Poisson distribution (MP-CUSUM) is proposed. The MP-CUSUM chart is constructed based on log-likelihood ratios with in-control parameters, Θ₀, and shifts to be detected quickly, Θ₁. The average run length (ARL) values are obtained using a Markov Chain-based method. Numerical experiments show that the MP-CUSUM chart is effective in detecting parameter shifts in terms of ARL. The MP-CUSUM chart with smaller Θ₁ is more sensitive than that with greater Θ₁ to smaller shifts, but more insensitive to greater shifts. A comparison shows that the proposed MP-CUSUM chart outperforms an existing MP chart.     

A Note on “Modified Tukey's Control Chart”

Tercero-Gomez et al. [Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation, 2012, 41(9), pp. 1566–1579] modified the Tukey's chart to improve the insensitivity of signaling mean shifts when the population is skewly distributed. They examine the efficiency for several skewed populations with the modified Tukey's chart (MTCC). The parameters of the MTCC were intuitively calibrated to fit several gamma distributions without following a specific mathematical procedure. Moreover, they performed no optimization for specific distributions. This study optimizes the MTCC with a statistical model for each skewed population and reexamines its efficiency. A numerical comparison shows that the optimal MTCC is sensitive to detect the shift of the means.     

On the Run Length of a State-Space Control Chart for Multivariate Autocorrelated Data

The literature on statistical process control (SPC) describes the negative effects of autocorrelation in terms of the increase in false alarms. This has been treated by the individual modeling of each series or the application of VAR models. In the former case, the analysis of the cross correlation structure between the variables is altered. In the latter, if the cross correlation is not strong, the filtering process may modify the weakest relations. In order to improve these aspects, state-space models have been introduced in multivariate statistical process control (MSPC). This article presents a proposal for building a control chart for innovations, estimating its average run length to highlight its advantages over the VAR approach mentioned above.     

A new Markov chain approach for the economic statistical design of the VSS T2 control chart

An economic statistical design model for a T² chart which uses a variable sample size (VSS) feature is developed in this article. This study mainly differs from the others conducted in the field. In that a new approach is offered to achieve closed form of some statistical criteria. In other words, the proposed formulas can be considered as a better alternative approach in designing the VSS control charts in terms of simplicity and yet providing the users with better optimal solutions.     

ARL Performance of the Tukey's Control Chart

A Tukey's control chart was designed to monitor single observation data. Its easy control-limits setting and simple statistical concept are the most important advantages. In this study, we setup the Tukey's control chart based on known probability distribution and construct its average run length calculator. ARL performance of the Tukey's control chart is evaluated under a normal distribution and non normal distributions, respectively. The comparison of ARL performance reveals that Tukey's control chart is not sensitive to shift detection when the process heavily violates the normal assumption. The number of observations needed for Tukey's control chart setup is less than Shewhart's control chart. Tukey's control chart is a better choice for the process mean monitoring.     

A New Adaptive Variable Sample Size Approach in EWMA Control Chart

Adaptive control charts have been developed for improving the capability of control charts in detecting small shifts. In this article, we propose a new exponential weighted moving average control chart with variable sample size, in which the sample size is determined as an integer linear function by EWMA statistic value. The performance of the proposed VSS EWMA control chart is compared with FSS EWMA as well as traditional VSS EWMA control charts. The results show the better performance of the proposed VSS strategy respect to the traditional one and fixed sample size.     

A new adaptive EWMA control chart using auxiliary information for monitoring the process mean

The adaptive memory-type control charts, including the adaptive exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) and cumulative sum (CUSUM) charts, have gained considerable attention because of their excellent speed in providing overall good detection over a range of mean shift sizes. In this paper, we propose a new adaptive EWMA (AEWMA) chart using the auxiliary information for efficiently monitoring the infrequent changes in the process mean. The idea is to first estimate the unknown process mean shift using an auxiliary information based mean estimator, and then adaptively update the smoothing constant of the EWMA chart. Using extensive Monte Carlo simulations, the run length profiles of the AEWMA chart are computed and explored. The AEWMA chart is compared with the existing control charts, including the classical EWMA, CUSUM, synthetic EWMA and synthetic CUSUM charts, in terms of the run length characteristics. It turns out that the AEWMA chart performs uniformly better than these control charts when detecting a range of mean shift sizes. An illustrative example is also presented to demonstrate the working and implementation of the proposed and existing control charts.     

Applications: CUSUM Charts for AR1 Data: are they worth the Effort?

The conventional one-sided CUSUM procedure is extended for controlling autocorrelated data which are approximately AR1. The performances of these procedures are compared using simulation studies and the average run length as a criterion. Also these procedures are compared to two versions of Shewhart individual charts. Two applications are considered.     

Profile Monitoring Using Nonparametric Bootstrap T 2 Control Chart

In certain statistical process control applications, performance of a product or process can be monitored effectively using a linear profile or a linear relationship between a response variable and one or more explanatory variables. In this article, we design a nonparametric bootstrap control chart for monitoring simple linear profiles based on T ² statistic. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method in phase II. The average and standard deviation of the run length under different shifts in the intercept, slope, and standard deviation are considered as the performance measures. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed bootstrap control chart improves as the size of the available data increases.     

One-sided EWMA control charts for monitoring Poisson processes with varying sample sizes

ABSTRACT

Recently considerable research has been devoted to monitoring increases of incidence rate of adverse rare events. This paper extends some one-sided upper exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts from monitoring normal means to monitoring Poisson rate when sample sizes are varying over time. The approximated average run length bounds are derived for these EWMA-type charts and compared with the EWMA chart previously studied. Extensive simulations have been conducted to compare the performance of these EWMA-type charts. An illustrative example is given.     

Modified Tukey's Control Chart

Phase I of control analysis requires large amount of data to fit a distribution and estimate the corresponding parameters of the process under study. However, when only individual observations are available, and no a priori knowledge exists, the presence of outliers can bias the analysis. A relatively recent and successful approach to address this situation is Tukey's Control Chart (TCC), a charting method that applies the Box Plot technique to estimate the control limits. This procedure has proven to be effective for symmetric distributions. However, when skewness is present the average run length performance diminishes significantly. This article proposes a modified version of TCC to consider skewness with minimum assumptions on the underlying distribution of observations. Using theoretical results and Monte Carlo simulation, the modified TCC is tested over several distributions proving a better representation of skewed populations, even in cases when only a limited number of observations are available.     

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.     

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.     

An Examination of the Robustness to Non Normality of the EWMA Control Charts for the Dispersion

ABSTRACT

The EWMA control chart is used to detect small shifts in a process. It has been shown that, for certain values of the smoothing parameter, the EWMA chart for the mean is robust to non normality. In this article, we examine the case of non normality in the EWMA charts for the dispersion. It is shown that we can have an EWMA chart for dispersion robust to non normality when non normality is not extreme.