Problems on SPC

1. A clothing company sells its specialty outdoor clothing through its catalogue.
A quality problem that generates customer complaints occurs when a
warehouse employee fills an order with the wrong items. The company has
decided to implement a process control plan by inspecting the ordered items
after they have been obtained from the warehouse and before they have
been packaged. The company has taken 30 samples (during a 30-day period),
each for 100 orders, and recorded the number of defective orders in each
sample as follows:

Sample No. of defectives Sample No. of defectives

1 12 16 6
2 14 17 3
3 10 18 7
4 16 19 10
5 18 20 14
6 19 21 18
7 14 22 22
8 20 23 26
9 18 24 20
10 17 25 24
11 9 26 18
12 11 27 19
13 14 28 20
14 12 29 17
15 7 30 18

Construct a p-chart for the company that describes 99.74% (3 sigma) of the
random variation in the process and indicate if the process seems to be out of
control at any time.
2. An automatic filling machine is used to fill 1 litre bottles of cola. The
machines output is approx. normal with mean of 1.0 lit and S.D. of 0.01 lit.
Output is monitored using means of samples of 25 observations.
(i) Determine UCL & LCL that will include roughly 97% of the sample means
when the process is in control?
(ii) Given these sample means: 1.005, 1.001, 0.998, 1.002, 0.995 & 0.999, is
the process in control?
3. Checkout time at a supermarket is monitored using a mean and range chart.
6 samples of n = 20 observations are obtained and the sample means and
ranges computed:

Sample Mean Range Sample Mean

Range
1 3.06 0.42 4 3.13 0.46

2 3.15 0.50 5 3.06 0.46

3 3.11 0.41 6 3.09 0.45
 For n = 20, A2 = 0.18, D3 = 0.41, D4 = 1.59
(i) Determine UCL & LCL for mean and range chart.
(ii) Is the process in control?

4. Using samples of 200 credit card statements, an auditor found the following:
Sample 1 2 3 4
Number with errors 4 2 5 9
i) Determine the fraction defective in each sample.
ii) If the true fraction defective for this process is unknown, what is your
estimate of it?
iii) What is your estimate of the mean and SD of the sampling distribution
of fractions defective for samples of this size?
iv) What control limits would give you an alpha risk of 0.03 for this
process?
v) What alpha risk would control limits of 0.047 and 0.003 provide?
vi) Using control limits of 0.047 and 0.003, is the process in control?
vii) Suppose that the long-term fraction defective of the process is known
to be 2%. What are the values of the mean and SD of the sampling
distribution?
viii) Construct a control chart for the process, assuming a fraction defective
of 2%, using 2 sigma control limits. Is the process in control?
5. An appliance manufacturer wants to contract with a repair shop to handle
authorized repairs in Indianapolis. The company has set an acceptable range
of repair time of 50 minutes to 90 minutes. Two firms have submitted bids for
the work. In test trials, one firm had a mean repair time of 74 minutes with a
SD of 4.0 minutes and the other firm had a mean repair time of 72 minutes
with a SD of 5.1 minutes. Which firm would you choose and why?
6. Each of the processes listed is non-centred with respect to the specifications
for that process. Compute the appropriate capability index for each and
decide if the process is capable.

Process Mean S.D. Lower spec. Upper spec.

H 15.0 0.32 14.1 16.0

K 33.0 1.00 30.0 36.5

T 18.5 0.40 16.5 20.1