Comparison of accumulate-combine and combine-accumulate methods in multivariate CUSUM charts for mean vector

We compared two basic methods, combine-accumulate method and accumulate-combine method, using the past quality information in multivariate quality control procedure for monitoring mean vector of multivariate normal process. When small or moderate shifts have occurred, accumulate-combine method yields smaller average run length (ARL) and average time to signal (ATS) than combine-accumulate method. On the other hand, we have found from our numerical results that combine-accumulate method has better performances in terms of switching behavior than accumulate-combine method. In industry, a quality engineer could select one of the two method under the comprehensive consideration about the required time to signal, switching behavior, and other physical factors in the production process.