Economic Adjustment Design For $\bar{X}$ Control Chart: A Markov Chain Approach

The Markov Chain approach is used to develop an economic adjustment model of a process whose quality can be affected by a single special cause, resulting in changes of the process mean by incorrect adjustment of the process when it is operating according to its capability. The $\bar{X}$ control chart is thus used to signal the special cause. It is demonstrated that the expressions for the expected cycle time and the expected cycle cost are easier to obtain by the proposed approach than by adopting that in Collani, Saniga and Weigang (1994). Furthermore, this approach would be easily extended to derive the expected cycle cost and the expected cycle time for the case of multiple special causes or multiple control charts. A numerical example illustrates the proposed method and its application.