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Alexander Naidenov,
Abstract. The pursuit of high quality production is one of the main topics of our
modern world society. The great variety and complexity of the production
characteristics lead to the need for use of the specific software products in order to
control for the production process quality. There are many software solutions to this
issue but one of the most famous is SPSS. Although the latter is a wide range purposed
software tool it also provides great opportunities for a basic quality control analysis.
The paper is a critical review of SPSS quality control functions and features.
Keywords: SPSS, quality, control, process, tools
1. Introduction
Our contemporary society is dedicated to the mass production and consumption of
incredible wide variety of products. Some manufacturers prefer to produce low cost products
with low quality but other pursuit the excellence in all directions.
When we talk about quality products we understand different things. The consumer
imagines a quality good or service as such that would satisfy his/hers physical, emotional and
mental needs. But if we ask the manufactures they will replay: ‘Our quality products
(services) are such because they meet the required standards’. When these two viewpoints
collide the concept of production process quality is born.
The manufacturers who follow their production standards and strive to satisfy
consumer needs are obliged to observe a great number of rules concerning the product or
service characteristics and features. In order to achieve a certain level of ‘perfection’ in these
quality characteristics (e.g. weight of a biscuit, length of a knife blade, smoothly working
tablet PC operating system, etc.) we need to probe continuously the status of these. This is
due to the fact that principle ‘everything changes’ holds for the production characteristics
too. The variation of the latter is caused by different kind of sources e.g. tired worker makes
more mistakes, worn machine produces poor output, bad raw materials lead to bad products,
etc. So if we can reduce this variation in the characteristics we will achieve easier the
standard requirements and finally we will have production with certain level of quality.
The first step to manage the variation of production characteristics is to survey and
observe their changes in time. If we are able to measure and control the levels of these
characteristics we will be able to provide assurance of good production quality.
There are many statistical and non-statistical tools for production process quality
control but one of the most popular ones, even now - ninety years after their invention, are so
called Shewhart control charts. Generally speaking they are a special graphical visualization
of certain product characteristic temporal dynamics. These charts provide the possibilities for
observation of characteristics’ changes in the time and interference in the production process,
if there is a warning for product quality worsening.
Unfortunately one product or service doesn’t have only one dimension of quality.
Even the one-piece type products, such as the kitchen knife, have more than one
characteristic – blade length, hardness, sharpness, handle comfort and etc. In order to control
for all the quality features of a given product, we usually use modern technologies such as
computers, sensors, lasers and so on. Nowadays every product, subject to quality control, is
an object of detailed measurements which are stored as a raw data in big databases. The latter
are then imported in specialized software products to deepen the analysis of the process
dynamics and variation. Many of today’s statistical packages, which are multi-purposed
ones, include a set of statistical methods for quality control of production process data. This
paper considers the most famous and widely used software for broad-range analysis -
Statistical Package for Social Science (or SPSS) and its usage for basic quality control
analyses. Next sections are dedicated to a short description of the software capabilities in the
quality control field and also a critical review of its features.
When data are available for a sample of units we use so called X-bar (mean), R
(range) and s (standard deviation from a sample) charts. By the combined use of these we
can simultaneously account for the change in the accuracy (sample means) and for the
precision (sample range and standard deviation) of a given the production process. In Fig.2
(the left part) we can see the required fields for control chart building. These are: Process
Measurement (defines the variable that contains the measurements of interest), Subgroups
Defined by (defines the variable which account for the identification of each sample) and
Identify points by (defines the variable which identify each and every measurement in order
to expose for which of them we should worry about). At this step we can choose how we will
measure precision – by R or by s charts. Also there are additional options available for each
control chart given as buttons: Titles (user defined chart titles), Options (defines the number
of sigmas (standard error boundaries) to use in testing and the size of each sample
(subgroup), Control Rules (specific rules used to perform quality control using control charts
features [6]) and Statistics (control chart capability analysis features using indexes [5]).
Titles Options
Using example data from the production process of terracotta tiles (21 random
samples of 7 units) we attain the following control charts:
X-bar control chart R control chart
Fig.4. Screenshots of SPSS output results for variable control charts (an example).
As it can be seen in Fig.4, control charts are presented visually in order to find out if
there are any warnings or rules violations. For every chart also we can see the average of
sample means (average is given with solid line and means with diamonds), upper and lower
control limits (given with dotted lines). Automatically the possible rule violations (presented
as circled points) are described in tables too with additional information for the ID of the
problematic measurement(s).
An extra feature is the capability analysis which shows the production process
possibilities in the scope of manufacturing production in the specification limits:
Fig.5. Screenshots of SPSS output results for capability analysis (process statistics).
The features for the control charts for individuals are almost the same but considering
the fact that here we do not have samples of a number of units we cannot calculate sample
means, ranges and standard deviations. In this case we use so called moving range or the
difference between two consecutive measurements. The use of those kind of control charts is
imposed by the peculiarities of some manufacturing or servicing process that have for
example only one unit at random time intervals (e.g. customer claims in a bank).
When there are no possibilities for quantitative measurement of production items (e.g.
we have only a description of the item quality features) we usually define the units only as
defective (non-conforming) and fit-to-use (conforming) ones i.e. we use so called attribute
control charts. If we are interested in the number of defects per item then we call these issues
non-conformities. In SPSS we can use np (number of non-conforming units from all
produced) and c (number of non-conformities) chart – if each sample used has an equal size,
and p (proportion of non-conforming units from all produced) and u (number of non-
conformities per unit) – for the unequal size samples.
p and np control charts c and u control charts
Similarly to the variable control chart we should define: subgroups and point (units)
identifiers but also specific variables for the nonconforming items and the nonconformities.
It is important to indicate if we have used equal (constant) or unequal (variable) sample
sizes. The options and control rules are exactly the same as those for the variable control
charts.
Using sample data for quality control of the color pencil production we obtain the
following results for the four types of attribute charts:
In this case we can also notice the presence of information about the center line
(target value), upper and lower control limits (at ±3 standard errors), sample non-conforming
items and non-conformities too. In case of need for rules violation analysis an output for
these is also available:
Fig.8. Screenshots of SPSS output results for attribute control charts (rules violations).
When we deal with attribute data a lack of capability analysis is evident, so in this
case it is omitted. However we have additional capabilities for defect items analysis and it is
based on so called Pareto charts, named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-
1923) who discovered that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population
(see Fig.1 - right part). They are useful if we’d like to find out what are the major reasons for
non-conforming units production. For example if execute quality control for a call-center
service, indicating reasons for eventual client claims, we could get the following results by
summarizing the collected data:
SPSS Pareto Chart window Output results
The abovementioned functions are not obligatory but they are essential especially
when the statisticians or researchers want to do more elaborate analysis of the quality status
of a given production process.
3. Conclusion
Even though SPSS is not a ‘real’ quality control tool it provides a sufficient amount of
basic functionalities for the quality issues management. Unlike its qualified and specialized
competitors (Minitab and Statistica), which provide sophisticated and elaborated quality
control instruments, this software product gives a limited options for quality analyses mainly
by the use of control and Pareto charts. However we hope that our favorite universal all-in-
one tool for the data processing will continue developing in the scope of its quality control
functions and soon we will be able to do more powerful and complex quality statistical
analyses.
References
1. IBM Corporation: IBM SPSS Statistics 22 Core System User's Guide (2013).
2. IBM Corporation: IBM SPSS Online Help (2013).
3. Lohr, S.: Sampling: Design and Analysis, Duxbury Press (2010)
4. Mitra, A.: Fundamentals of quality control and improvement, John Wiley & Sons (2008)
5. Montgomery, D.: Introduction to Statistical Quality Control, Sixth Edition, Wiley & Sons Inc.
(2009).
6. Oakland, J.: Statistical Process Control, Sixth Edition, Butterworth-Heinemann (2008).