Economic Statistical Design of a Three-Level Control Chart with VSI Scheme

Traditionally, the statistical quality control techniques utilize either an attributes or variables product quality measure. Recently, some methods such as three-level control chart have been developed for monitoring multi attribute processes. Control chart usually has three design parameters: the sample size (n), the sampling interval (h) and the control limit coefficient (k).The design parameters of the control chart are generally specified according to statistical or/and economic criteria. The variable sampling interval (VSI) control scheme has been shown to provide an increase to the detecting efficiency of the control chart with fixed sampling rate (FRS). In this paper a method is proposed to conduct the economic-statistical design for variable sampling interval of the three-level control charts. We use the cost model developed by Costa and Rahim and optimize this model by genetic algorithm approach. We compare the expected cost per unit time of the VSI and FRS 3-level control charts. Results indicate that the proposed chart has improved performance.