Economic Selection of the Lower Limit and the Process Mean for a Continuous Production Process

연속생산공정에서 규격하한과 공정평균의 경제적 설정

This paper is concerned with the economic selection of both the lower limit and the process mean for a continuous production process. Consider a production process where items are produced continuously. All of the items are subject to acceptance inspection. The items for which the measured values of the quality characteristic are larger than the lower limit are accepted, and those smaller than the lower limit are rejected and excluded from shipment. The process mean may be set higher to reduce the costs incurred by imperfect quality. Using a higher process mean, however, results in a higher production cost when production cost is an increasing function of the quality characteristic. Assuming that the quality characteristic is normally distributed with known variability, cost models are constructed which involve production cost, cost incurred by imperfect quality, rejection cost, and inspection cost. Methods of finding optimal values of the lower limit and the process mean are presented and numerical examples are given.