Statistical Process Control Example

Your organisation manufactures cylinder liners for the marine and truck engine
markets. You wish to understand the levels of process control and capability for the
critical characteristics of the liners. One such characteristic is bore diameter. You
have a tolerance for this dimension of 33.0mm  0.80mm. You have measured 50
subgroups of 5 (each subgroup consisting of consecutively produced parts) in order to
create a pair of Shewhart Statistical Process Control charts. The table below shows
the averages and ranges for the subgroups.

Subgroup 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Average 33.2 32.5 33.8 33.8 33.1 32.8 33.3 34.0 34.7 33.4

Range 1.6 1.3 1.2 1.3 1.5 1.1 1.4 1.5 1.2 1.2

Subgroup 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Average 33.2 33.7 33.0 34.1 33.2 32.9 33.2 33.5 33.0 32.8

Range 1.3 1.1 1.7 1.2 1.3 1.8 1.4 1.5 1.0 1.3

a) Draw and appropriately annotate an appropriate pair of control charts for

the data (NB control limit calculation constants for a subgroup size of 5
are A2 = 0.58, D4 = 2.114). Ensure that all equations used are shown and
explained

b) Briefly discuss your observations of the patterns of the chart.

c) Discuss the level of capability of the process, clearly indicating your

diagnosis of the situation.

d) Given the situation you have described in c) above, how would you go
about improving the process capability?