STATISTICAL QUALITY CONTROL

In this modern era of competition, quality is one of the important subjects receiving increasing worldwide attention. It has been well recognized that failure to meet quality would adversely affect the customer, the society and the existence of the organization itself. Hence, we need to take a systematic approach for building and maintaining quality of products. This requires that all the decisions and actions should be taken on the basis of objective evidence after proper analysis of data. Data arises at a number of stages; i.e., in development of new method or new products; in reviewing past experience for setting up of standards; in assessment of quality of incoming materials, in-process materials and in final inspection and testing of products; in survey of performance in actual use; and in study of customer preferences. Thus, it becomes necessary to summarize, analyse and interpret data. Statistical techniques are widely used for analysis and interpretation of data. STATISTICAL TOOLS FOR QUALITY CONTROL & QUALITY IMPROVEMENT TOOLS Control chart APPLICATIONS a) To evaluate process stability b) To determine when a process needs to be adjusted and when it needs to be left as it is. c) To confirm an improvement to a process a) To analyse and communicate cause and effect diagram relationships. b) To facilitate problem solving from symptom to cause to solution. a) To display the pattern of variation of data. b) To communicate visually information about process behaviour. c) To make decisions about where to focus improvement efforts. a) To display, in order of importance, the contribution of each item to the total effect. b) To rank improvement opportunities. a) To discover and confirm relationship between two associated sets of data to confirm anticipated relationship between two associated sets of data. a) To divide data in homogeneous group for finding the source for the problem.

Cause-and-effect diagram

Histogram

Pareto Diagram Scatter Diagram

Stratification

CONTROL CHARTS Some of the major problems being faced by the manufacturers are:

To Control and maintain quality To know if the process is capable of meeting specified requirements To confirm whether the process has improved.
For solving the above problems, efforts should be made for controlling the quality during the process of manufacture itself so that a manufacturer could know when the process needs to be adjusted and when it is to be left as it is. Keeping this in view, in 1924, Dr. W.A. Shewhart of Bell Laboratories, USA developed control chart for controlling the quality during production. The control chart is a graphical method wherein time sequence is plotted against sample statistics (i,e. Average, median, range, standard deviation, percent nonconforming and number of non-conformities). It consists of a central line (CL) denoting the average value of statistics being plotted and it has two control limits on either side of the central line which are called upper control limit (UCL) and lower control limit (LCL). The control limits are determined by statistical methods. It may be noted that the control chart technique gives a warning signal whenever the quality is likely to go out of control. However, it does not provide the causes or the corrective actions for such a situation. Therefore, the effectiveness of control chart depends upon the promptness with which the warning is heeded to and actions taken. BASIC CONSPECTUS OF CONTROL CHART TECHNIQUE Variation in any quality characteristic may be due to number of causes and their interaction, known and unknown, which continuously play with the process. These causes may broadly classified into two categories, namely, a) Variation due to assignable causes b) Variation due to chance causes Variation due to assignable causes means where we can assign some causes, for example, different operators, different setting of a machine or different machines, different batches of raw materials, different conditions etc. Variation due to chance causes means where we can not assign any cause for the variation and that it is only due inherent variations in the process for example, inherent variation exits within the same raw material, machine, operator, conditions etc. Therefore, it is expected that the variation due to chance causes will be smaller compared to the variations due to assignable causes.

When the process operates only under chance causes, it is said to be in a state of statistical control. Such variations occur in a random fashion and the distribution is a bell shaped curve called normal distribution. A normal distribution has two parameters, namely, mean and standard deviation. If we draw a control limits at +3 times s.d. of statistics on either side of the mean, and if the process is in statistical control, then all points should lie within these control limits. This means that the process is operating under chance causes. The moment a point goes outside the control limits, it is considered that at that point of time the process is not operating under chance causes and some assignable cause has crept in. An immediate investigation should be made and action taken for elimination of such causes. The purpose of control chart is, therefore, to obtain a state of statistical control by locating and eliminating the assignable causes and then to maintain the production in this state so as to ensure the manufacture of uniform product of acceptable quality. As long as the plotted points are within the control limits, the process is left alone. However, if a point falls either below the Lower Control Limit (LCL) or above the Upper Control Limit (UCL), there is a possibility of the existence of some assignable causes and an investigation is made and action taken for the elimination of such causes. These process control charts are prepared as per the guidelines given in IS : 397 (Part I)- 1972 and Hand Book on Statistical Quality Control published by Bureau of Indian Standards ( SP:28-1985) Part -III, Section -2, Chapter-1. Procedure for cement grinding specific surface & Clinker Litre weight control chart: One of the important factors for producing good quality cement is its fineness (specific surface) and its consistency (homogeneity). Therefore a pair of control charts for specific surface of grinding cement are prepared - one for the control of daily average value (average chart) and the other for the control of dispersion (standard deviation chart). For the purpose of determining the Central Line (CL) and the control limits, one month data of bi-hourly specific surface of both OPC 43 and PPC are taken where the bi-hourly data for a day is taken as a sub-group. These preliminary data are homogenized for the dispersion (standard deviation) and the central tendency (average value) as described below:Homogenisation for dispersion: For each of the bi-hourly samples in a day, the standard deviation (s) for cement specific surface is computed and from these values the average standard deviation ( s ) is computed. If all the individual "s" values are less than or equal to B 4 s (where B4 is a factor chosen from Table 11 of Part -IV of SP: 28-1985), then the initial data is considered to be homogeneous. However, if one or more s values are found to be in excess of B 4 s the observations corresponding to these subgroups are discarded. For the remaining data the above procedure is repeated (that

is, the calculation of a new standard deviation s and the comparison of the remaining s values with B 4 s ) till all the standard deviation values are found to be homogeneous. Homogenisation for central tendency: From the homogenized data the average of each sub- group (

x)

is calculated.

The average of these averages or the grand average ( x ) for all the samples is calculated. Then a quantity A 1 s is calculated where the factor A1 is suitably chosen from Table 11 of Part -IV of SP: 28- 1985. If any of the averages are found to lie outside the interval x A 1 s , then the observation in the sub-group corresponding to these averages are discarded. From the remaining data a fresh grand average is computed and the above procedure is repeated till all the average values are found to lie within

A1s

Control limits for the chart for controlling the dispersion (standard deviation chart - s chart). Central line (CL) s = the ultimate average standard deviation ( s ) Upper Control Limit (UCL) = B 4 s Lower Control Limit ( LCL) = B 3 s Where the factors B 4 and B 3 are suitably chosen from Table 11 of Part -IV of SP: 28-1985. Control limits for the chart for controlling central tendency (average chart -

chart). = the ultimate grand average (

Central line (CL)

x)

Upper Control Limit (UCL) = Lower Control Limit ( LCL) =

x+ x

A1 s - A1 s

where the factor A1 is suitably chosen from Table 11 of Part -IV of SP: 28-1985.

Procedure for cement packing compressive strength control charts.

The data for compressive strengths of daily average cement packing samples (OPC 43 and PPC) are used as individual values and the homogenisation of the data is done by using the method of moving range. For this purpose the successive differences of the individual values, that is, the difference between the first and the second observations, difference between the second and the third observations, and so on are calculated, ignoring the sign of the difference. Thus the number of values of the moving range works out to be one less than the total number of individual values. From these moving ranges the value of average moving range ( R ) is calculated. If each of the individual moving range (R) lies less than or equal to 3.267 R , then the preliminary data is considered to be homogeneous. If, however, one or more range values exceed this limit, these ranges are eliminated and the procedure is repeated till all the ranges are found to be homogeneous. From the entire data, over all average ( individual chart are obtained as (

x ) is computed. The U.C.L. and L.C.L for

+ 2.66 R ) and (

- 2.66 R ) respectively,

where R is the average of the homogenized moving ranges. If any of the individual values are found to lie outside the control limits, they are eliminated and the new average is calculated from the remaining observations. This process is repeated till all the remaining observations are found to be within the control limits. The CL, UCL and LCL for the individual control charts are the ultimate average ( x ), ( x + 2.66 R ) and ( x - 2.66 R ) respectively, where R is the ultimate homogenized average moving range.