Abstract
An economic design of the $\bar{X}-R$ chart using variable sample size (VSS) scheme is proposed in this paper. In this design the sample size at each sampling time changes according to the values of the previous two sample statistics, sample mean and range. The VSS scheme uses large sample if the sample statistics appear near inside the control limits and smaller sample otherwise. The set of process parameters, such as the sampling interval, control limits and the sample sizes, are chosen to minimize the expected cost per hour. The efficiency of the VSS scheme is compared to the fixed sample size one for cases where there is multiple of assignable causes. Percent reductions of the expected cost in the VSS design are calculated for some given sets of cost parameters. It is shown that the VSS scheme improves the confidence of the procedure and performs statistically better in terms of the number of false alarms and the average time to signal, respectively.