An Adaptive Moving Average (A-MA) Control Chart with Variable Sampling Intervals (VSI)

This paper proposes an adaptive moving average (A-MA) control chart with variable sampling intervals (VSI) for detecting shifts in the process mean. The basic idea of the VSI A-MA chart is to adjust sampling intervals as well as to accumulate previous samples selectively in order to increase the sensitivity. The VSI A-MA chart employs a threshold limit to determine whether or not to increase sampling rate as well as to accumulate previous samples. If a standardized control statistic falls outside the threshold limit, the next sample is taken with higher sampling rate and is accumulated to calculate the next control statistic. If the control statistic falls within the threshold limit, the next sample is taken with lower sampling rate and only the sample is used to get the control statistic. The VSI A-MA chart produces an 'out-of-control' signal either when any control statistic falls outside the control limit or when L-consecutive control statistics fall outside the threshold limit. The control length L is introduced to prevent small mean shifts from being undetected for a long period. A Markov chain model is employed to investigate the VSI A-MA sampling process. Formulae related to the steady state average time-to signal (ATS) for an in-control state and out-of-control state are derived in closed forms. A statistical design procedure for the VSI A-MA chart is proposed. Comparative studies show that the proposed VSI A-MA chart is uniformly superior to the adaptive Cumulative sum (CUSUM) chart and to the Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) chart, and is comparable to the variable sampling size (VSS) VSI EWMA chart with respect to the ATS performance.

가변 샘플링 간격(VSI)을 갖는 적응형 이동평균 (A-MA) 관리도