An economic¯X-chart approach to the joint control of the means of independent quality characteristics

Summary In controlling the mean of a multivariate normally distributed quality characteristic the main disadvantage of the globalT²-control charts is that they don't indicate the component of the quality characteristic which gives rise to an alarm. To avoid this disadvantage the joint use of¯x-charts is proposed in this paper, where — for the sake of simplicity — the investigations are restricted to the case of independent components and to one-sided¯x-charts. On the basis of an economic objective function an approximation to the optimal design of the¯x-charts procedure is derived and discussed. It turns out that at least in the bivariate case the nearly optimal economic design is very close to the exact solution.Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).