Goal Programming Approach to a Type of Quality Control Problem

Fixing the levels of inputs and process variables in order to meet a required specification of output is a common quality control problem. However difficulties can arise when the output has a number of characteristics and when each of these characteristics has to satisfy a specification. Such a problem was met in a paper manufacturing factory and the problem was solved using Goal Programming (GP). The method can be applied to other process control problems and this paper gives the GP formulation of the general process control problem. The paper also gives details of the case study from which the method was developed.