Operations & Supply Chain Management (OSCM):

Quality Engineering & Management

Problem Set 1: Statistics for Quality

Calculating Yield
1.1 Your bicycle factory makes standard bicycles using a process of 35 steps. Each
step has a yield of 90%. Explain in 2-3 sentences why you go out of business
immediately.
1.2 What is the maximum yield loss at each process step for a serial process with 100
steps in order to have an overall process yield of at least 60,00%?
1.3 Given a production process with three production steps as shown below, what is the
overall Process Yield if the first production step has a yield of 98%; the second, of
99%; and the third, of 85%?

1.4 Explain in term of DPMO the difference between a process yield of 90% for a
microprocessor is different from a process yield of 90% for plastic drink bottles.

1.5 Using the example from the lecture for the Mini with 10,000 parts and processes
each with 1 defect opportunity per part/process, explain (no calculations) what the
“Six-Sigma” production with only 3.4 ppm defects means.

1.6 Given that each step in your your 10-step serial process has 66800 ppm defects,
and that there is only 1 opportunity for a defect in each process step, what
percentage of your products will be defect-free?

Chapter 2 - Exercises in Probability Distributions

2.32 A plane has four engines. Each engine has a probability of failing during a flight of
0.3. What is the probability that no more than two engines will fail during a flight?
Assume that the engines are independent.

2.34 A chemical plant experiences an average of three accidents per month. What is the
probability that there will be no more than two accidents next month?

2.36 Let X ~ N(10, 25). Find P(X < 15), P(X ≥ 12), and P(9 ≤ × ≤ 20).

2.38 Let X ~ N(5, 4). Find b such that P(X > b) = 0.20.

2.40 Let X ~ N(5, 9). Find the values of a and b such that P(a ≤ X < b) = 0.80 if the interval
(a, b) is symmetrical about the mean.

2.42 Automatic fillers are used to fill cans of cooking oil, which have to meet a minimum
specification of 10 oz. To ensure that every can meets this minimum, the company
has set a target value for the process average at 11 oz. The standard deviation of the
amount of oil in a can is known to be 0.20 oz.
 a. At the process average of 11 oz, what percentage of the cans will contain less
than 10 oz of cooking oil? Assume that the amount of oil in cans is normally
distributed.

b. Assuming that virtually all values of a normal distribution fall within a distance of
3.5σ from the mean, find the minimum value to which the process average can be
lowered so that virtually no can will have less than 10 oz?

Chapter 2 - Exercises in Inference Methods

Confidence Intervals

2.44 A random sample of nine electric bulbs was chosen from a production process and
tested until failure. The lives in hours were 1366, 1372, 1430, 1246, 1449, 1268,
1408, 1468, and 1502, respectively. Give a 95% CI for the average life of the bulbs
produced in the process if it is known that the life is normally distributed with a
standard deviation of 100 hours.

2.46 A random sample of nine electric bulbs was chosen from a production process and
tested until failure. The lives in hours were 1366, 1372, 1430, 1246, 1449, 1268,
1408, 1468, and 1502, respectively. Give a 90% CI for the mean life of the bulbs
produced in the process if it is known that the life is normally distributed but the
population standard deviation is not known.

2.48 The following data come from strength of steel specimens in thousands of psi: 77.8,
78.7, 58.6, 43.7, 67.6, 46.9, 82.1, 90.8, 67.9, 76.9, 56.6, 74.8, 72.0, 82.9, and 81.9.
Find the 95% CI for the mean and standard deviation of strength of steel in this
population if the population is assumed to be normal.

Hypothesis Testing

2.50 The shelf life of a battery is of interest to a manufacturer. A random sample of 10

batteries gave the following shelf lives in days: 108, 122, 110, 138, 124, 163, 124,
159, 106, and 134. Is there evidence that the mean shelf life is greater than 125
days? Assume that the shelf life is normal. Use α = 0.05.

2.52 A survey of alumni of two engineering programs in a college gave the following data
on their salaries after five years. Is there evidence to show that the average salaries
of the graduates from the two programs are different? Assume that both the salaries
are normally distributed and have a standard deviation of $12,000. Use α = 0.10.