The Development of a Target-Focused Process Capability Index with Multiple Characteristics

Within an industrial manufacturing environment, Process Capability Indices (PCIs) enable engineers to assess the process performance and ultimately improve the product quality. Despite the fact that most industrial products manufactured today possess multiple quality characteristics, the vast majority of the literature within this area primarily focuses on univariate measures to assess process capability. One particular univariate index, C(pm), is widely used to account for deviations between the location of the process mean and the target value of a process. While some researchers have sought to develop multivariate analogues of C(pm), modeling the loss in quality associated with multiple quality characteristics continues to remain a challenge. This paper proposes a multivariate PCI that more appropriately estimates quality loss, while offering greater flexibility in conforming to various industrial applications, and maintaining a more realistic approach to assessing process capability. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.