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After special causes have been identified and eliminated, a process is said to be in
state of statistical control. One of the products of attaining statistical control is that a process
then become predictable, and it makes sense to evaluate its ability to satisfy requirements that
are placed on it. If statistical control is not achieved, then the process average and standard
deviation are unstable and, correspondingly, calculation based on data from such a process
are unreliable.
According to Nicholas R. Farnum (1994), process capability is judged by comparing
process performance with process requirement. Since meeting specification limits is one of
the most basic requirements, capability analyses usually involve the specification limits
somewhere in their calculations. If the process limits both fall within specification limits that
mean when the process is in control, then the process is said to be capable, otherwise it is
not capable. Thus, before one proceeds with a capability study, it is important to verify that
the specification limits have been accurately determined.
This definition of process capability is rough one. For instance, it implies that a process
would be considered capable if its process limits just coincided with the specification limits.
From the normal tables, this would mean that about 0.27% of the output would be outside of
the specifications. Given the current emphasis on achieving nonconforming rates only a few
part per million, a process whose non-conformance rate is 0.27% would be unacceptable for
modern quality improvement programs.
Besides that, according to Pyzdek (1985). The processes of capability analysis have two
different stages that involve:1
2
Carrying the process into a state of statistical control for a reasonable period of time.
Comparing the long-term process performance to management or engineering
requirements.
The process of the analysis is to figure out two different results with either attribute data or
continuous data, but the whole of process must be in the form of statistical control pattern,
and has been for a reasonable period of time. Under statistical analysis of process capability
data, there have several methods to analysing for example; using control chart whether is
attributes data or variables data, and process capability indexes.
A Highly Capable Process: Voice of the Process < Specification (or Customer Expectations)
2. This process has a spread just about equal to specification width. It should be noted
that if the process mean moves to the left or the right, a significant portion of product
will start falling outside one of the specification limits. This process must be closely
monitored. The Cp for this process is Cp = 1 to 1.33 (A Barely Capable Process).
A Non-Capable
Process: Voice of
off-center. In such cases, adjustment is required to move the process mean back to
target. If no action is taken, a substantial portion of the output will fall outside the
specification limit even though the process might be in statistical control. The Cp for
this process Cp = Cp < 1 ( The Process is not Capable )
An adjustment in the centring of the process will result in nearly all output meeting
specification, notice that the process is capable of meeting specification but cannot because
centring problems.
These example show us why it is important and to understand the variation in the
process output. If we can determine what the true state of quality is and how well a process
can meet the design specification then we can take action to improve the process and the
quality of our product. This is the purpose of having process capability analysis.
According to James R. Evans (1991), the relationship between the natural variation of
a process and the design specifications is often qualified by a measure called the process
capability index, Cp. Many manufacturers use Cp to monitor the quality of their suppliers,
and it is even used in purchasing contracts.
Process capability index (cpk) is the measure of process capability. It shows how
closely a process is able to produce the output to its overall specifications. According to
Johannes Ledolter & Claude W. Burrill (1999), a common used measure of capability is the
Cp capability index. It is given by
Formula:
Cp = USL LSL = allowable spread
6
actual spread
LSL and USL are the lowel and upper specification limits, and is the process standard
deviation. Note that for the time being we assume that the process characteristics are known.
LSL is the allowable process spread, and the Cp relates the allowable spread to the actual
process spread. For capable processes we expect that the actual process spread is smaller than
the allowable spread, and the Cp is the larger one. A large value of Cp indicates that the
process variability is small when compared to the width of specification interval. The larger
this index, the better.
From our data, (data is taken from the Table 1 page 55), we can calculate the Cp,
USL = 375, LCL = 270
Standard deviation (): sd =
15369707.5150 ( 319.34 )
1501
15369707.5150(101978.03)
149
f x2n x 2
n1
= 489.95
= 22.13
Cp = USL LSL
6s
= 375 270
6(22.13)
=
105
132.78
Cp = 0.790
The Cp index is interpreted as follows. Based on Nicholas R. Farnum (1994), if Cp =
1.0, the process is said to be marginally capable of meeting its specification limits. Thus, it
is desirable that value of Cp exceed 1.0, since then the likelihood is higher that the
measurements will be able to stay within the specification limits. A Cp that exceed 1.33 is
usually considered very good and is commonly used as a goal by many companies. On the
other hand, Cps less 1.0 imply that a process is not capable of meeting its specifications. So,
based on Cps result that we get, our process is not capable. This is because our natural
variation is larger than the tolerance spread, and make Cp will be less than 1.0. If the natural
variation is smaller than the tolerance spread, we would expect very good quality in this
situation, which means the value of Cp is greater than 1.0. So, the action that we can take to
solve this problem is improve by reducing common causes of variation in process variables.