Process Capability Studies for Short Production Runs

The current trend in modern production is directed towards shorter and shorter production runs. The two major reasons causing this trend are the rapid spread of the just in time (JIT) philosophy and the constantly increasing multiplicity of customer demands. The short runs of modern production not only constitute a challenge for production management, but they also cause some problems when applying traditional statistical methods, designed to be used for large sets of data. One of these methods is process capability studies. Since theories on how to use process capability studies in short production environments are incomplete, the aim of this paper is to present some ideas which will partly fill this gap.

The theories of process capability studies for short runs presented are based on ideas of focusing on the process, not on the products, and on using data transformation. By using the transformation presented, it is possible to conduct process capability studies in a traditional straightforward manner. A simulation study shows that the suggested transformation technique works satisfactorily in real situations. Finally, the -plot is introduced as a method of interpreting and analyzing the capability of a short run production process. By using the -plot, additional information is obtained concerning the capability of a process, compared to using traditional process capability indices only.