A Multivariate Homogeneously Weighted Moving Average Control Chart

This paper presents a multivariate homogeneously weighted moving average (MHWMA) control chart for monitoring a process mean vector. The MHWMA control chart statistic gives a specific weight to the current observation, and the remaining weight is evenly distributed among the previous observations. We present the design procedure and compare the average run length (ARL) performance of the proposed chart with multivariate Chi-square, multivariate EWMA, and multivariate cumulative sum control charts. The ARL comparison indicates superior performance of the MHWMA chart over its competitors, particularly for the detection of small shifts in the process mean vector. Examples are also provided to show the application of the proposed chart. - 2013 IEEE.Scopu

Contributions to improve the power, efficiency and scope of control-chart methods : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Statistics at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Listed in 2019 Dean's List of Exceptional ThesesDetection of outliers and other anomalies in multivariate datasets is a particularly difficult problem which spans across a range of systems, such as quality control in factories, microarrays or proteomic analyses, identification of features in image analysis, identifying unauthorized access in network traffic patterns, and detection of changes in ecosystems. Multivariate control charts (MCC) are popular and sophisticated statistical process control (SPC) methods for monitoring characteristics of interest and detecting changes in a multivariate process. These methods are divided into memory-less and memory-type charts which are used to monitor large and small-to-moderate shifts in the process, respectively. For example, the multivariate χ2 is a memory-less control chart that uses only the most current process information and disregards any previous observations; it is typically used where any shifts in the process mean are expected to be relatively large. To increase the sensitivity of the multivariate process control tool for the detection of small-to-moderate shifts in the process mean vector, different multivariate memory-type tools that use information from both the current and previous process observations have been proposed. These tools have proven very useful for multivariate independent normal or "nearly" normal distributed processes. Like most univariate control-chart methods, when the process parameters (i.e., the process mean vector or covariance parameters, or both) are unknown, then MCC methods are based on estimated parameters, and their implementation occurs in two phases. In Phase I (retrospective phase), a historical reference sample is studied to establish the characteristics of the in-control state and evaluate the stability of the process. Once the in-control reference sample has been deemed to be stable, the process parameters are estimated from Phase I, and control chart limits are obtained for use in Phase II. The Phase II aspect initiates ongoing regular monitoring of the process. If successive observed values obtained at the beginning of Phase II fall within specified desired in-control limits, the process is considered to be in control. In contrast, any observed values during Phase II which fall outside the specified control limits indicate that the process may be out of control, and remedial responses are then required. Although conventional MCC are well developed from a statistical point of view, they can be difficult to apply in modern, data-rich contexts. This serious drawback comes from the fact that classical MCC plotting statistics requires the inversion of the covariance matrix, which is typically assumed to be known. In practice, the covariance matrix is seldom known and often empirically estimated, using a sample covariance matrix from historical data. While the empirical estimate of the covariance matrix may be an unbiased and consistent estimator for a low-dimensional data matrix with an adequate prior sample size, it performs inconsistently in high-dimensional settings. In particular, the empirical estimate of the covariance matrix can lead to in ated false-alarm rates and decreased sensitivity of the chart to detect changes in the process. Also, the statistical properties of traditional MCC tools are accurate only if the assumption of multivariate normality is satisfied. However, in many cases, the underlying system is not multivariate normal, and as a result, the traditional charts can be adversely affected. The necessity of this assumption generally restricts the application of traditional control charts to monitoring industrial processes. Most MCC applications also typically focus on monitoring either the process mean vector or the process variability, and they require that the process mean vector be stable, and that the process variability be independent of the process mean. However, in many real-life processes, the process variability is dependent on the mean, and the mean is not necessarily constant. In such cases, it is more appropriate to monitor the coefficient of variation (CV). The univariate CV is the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean of a random variable. As a relative dispersion measure to the mean, it is useful for comparing the variability of populations having very different process means. More recently, MCC methods have been adapted for monitoring the multivariate coefficient of variation (CV). However, to date, studies of multivariate CV control charts have focused on power - the detection of out-of-control parameters in Phase II, while no study has investigated their in-control performance in Phase I. The Phase I data set can contain unusual observations, which are problematic as they can in uence the parameter estimates, resulting in Phase II control charts with reduced power. Relevant Phase I analysis will guide practitioners with the choice of appropriate multivariate CV estimation procedures when the Phase I data contain contaminated samples. In this thesis, we investigated the performance of the most widely adopted memory-type MCC methods: the multivariate cumulative sum (MCUSUM) and the multivariate exponentially weighted moving average (MEWMA) charts, for monitoring shifts in a process mean vector when the process parameters are unknown and estimated from Phase I (chapters 2 and 3). We demonstrate that using a shrinkage estimate of the covariance matrix improves the run-length performance of these methods, particularly when only a small Phase I sample size is available. In chapter 4, we investigate the Phase I performance of a variety of multivariate CV charts, considering both diffuse symmetric and localized CV disturbance scenarios, and using probability to signal (PTS) as a performance measure. We present a new memory-type control chart for monitoring the mean vector of a multivariate normally distributed process, namely, the multivariate homogeneously weighted moving average (MHWMA) control chart (chapter 5). We present the design procedure and compare the run length performance of the proposed MHWMA chart for the detection of small shifts in the process mean vector with a variety of other existing MCC methods. We also present a dissimilarity-based distribution-free control chart for monitoring changes in the centroid of a multivariate ecological community (chapter 6). The proposed chart may be used, for example, to discover when an impact may have occurred in a monitored ecosystem, and is based on a change-point method that does not require prior knowledge of the ecosystem's behaviour before the monitoring begins. A novel permutation procedure is employed to obtain the control-chart limits of the proposed charting test-statistic to obtain a suitable distance-based model of the target ecological community through time. Finally, we propose enhancements to some classical univariate control chart tools for monitoring small shifts in the process mean, for those scenarios where the process variable is observed along with a correlated auxiliary variable (chapters 7 through 9). We provide the design structure of the charts and examine their performance in terms of their run length properties. We compare the run length performance of the proposed charts with several existing charts for detecting a small shift in the process mean. We offer suggestions on the applications of the proposed charts (in chapters 7 and 8), for cases where the exact measurement of the process variable of interest or the auxiliary variable is diffcult or expensive to obtain, but where the rank ordering of its units can be obtained at a negligible cost. Thus, this thesis, in general, will aid practitioners in applying a wider variety of enhanced and novel control chart tools for more powerful and effcient monitoring of multivariate process. In particular, we develop and test alternative methods for estimating covariance matrices of some useful control-charts' tools (chapters 2 and 3), give recommendations on the choice of an appropriate multivariate CV chart in Phase I (chapter 4), present an efficient method for monitoring small shifts in the process mean vector (chapter 5), expand MCC analyses to cope with non-normally distributed datasets (chapter 6) and contribute to methods that allow efficient use of an auxiliary variable that is observed and correlated with the process variable of interest (chapters 7 through 9)

A homogenously weighted moving average scheme for observations under the effect of serial dependence and measurement inaccuracy

The combined effect of serial dependency and measurement errors is known to negatively affect the statistical efficiency of any monitoring scheme. However, for the recently proposed homogenously weighted moving average (HWMA) scheme, the research that exists concerns independent and identically distributed observations and measurement errors only. Thus, in this paper, the HWMA scheme for monitoring the process mean under the effect of within-sample serial dependence with measurement errors is proposed for both constant and linearly increasing measurement system variance. Monte Carlo simulation is used to evaluate the run-length distribution of the proposed HWMA scheme. A mixed-s&m sampling strategy is incorporated to the HWMA scheme to reduce the negative effect of serial dependence and measurement errors and its performance is compared to the existing Shewhart scheme. An example is given to illustrate how to implement the proposed HWMA scheme for use in real-life applications

The use of fast initial response features on the homogeneously weighted moving average chart with estimated parameters under the effect of measurement errors

Fast initial response (FIR) features are generally used to improve the sensitivity of memory-type control charts by shrinking time-varying control limits in the earlier stage of the monitoring regime. This paper incorporates FIR features to increase the sensitivity of the homogeneously weighted moving average (HWMA) monitoring schemes with and without measurement errors under constant as well as linearly increasing variance scenarios. The robustness and the performance of the HWMA monitoring schemes are investigated in terms of numerous run-length properties assuming that the underlying process parameters are known and unknown. It is found that the FIR features improves the performance of the HWMA monitoring scheme as compared to the standard no FIR feature HWMA scheme, and at the same time, it is observed that the simultaneous use of a recently proposed FIR feature and multiple measurements significantly reduces the negative effect of measurement errors. An illustrative example on the volume of milk in bottles is used to demonstrate a real-life application.https://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/qrehj2022Statistic

Improved Nonparametric Control Chart Based on Ranked Set Sampling with Application of Chemical Data Modelling

e statistical performance of parametric control charts is questionable when the underlying process does not follow any speci ed probability distribution. Nonparametric control charts are the best substitute for this situation. On the other hand, the ranked set sampling technique is preferred over the simple random sampling technique because it reduces the variability of process parameters and improves the control chart’s performance. is study aims to o er a nonparametric double homogeneously weighted moving average control chart under Wilcoxon signed-rank test considering the ranked set sampling technique (regarded as NPDHWMARSS), to further enhance the process location monitoring. e proposed chart’s run-length performance is compared with competing control charts, such as DEWMA-X, NPDEWMA-SR, NPRDEWMA-SR, DHWMA, and NPHWMARSS control charts. e comparison revealed that the proposed NPDHWMARSS control chart outperformed the other competing control charts, particularly for small to moderate shifts in process location. Finally, a real-life application is also o ered for quality practitioners to show the strength of the proposed control chartScopu

A new hwma dispersion control chart with an application to wind farm data

Recently, a homogeneously weighted moving average (HWMA) chart has been suggested for the efficient detection of small shifts in the process mean. In this study, we have proposed a new one-sided HWMA chart to effectively detect small changes in the process dispersion. The run-length (RL) profiles like the average RL, the standard deviation RL, and the median RL are used as the performance measures. The RL profile comparisons indicate that the proposed chart has a better performance than its existing counterpart's charts for detecting small shifts in the process dispersion. An application related to the Dhahran wind farm data is also part of this study.Funding: This research work was supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR) at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) under Project Number SB191030.Scopu

New extended distribution-free homogenously weighted monitoring schemes for monitoring abrupt shifts in the location parameter

A homogeneously weighted moving average (HWMA) monitoring scheme is a recently proposed memory-type scheme that gained its popularity because of its simplicity and superiority over the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) and cumulative sum (CUSUM) schemes in detecting small disturbances in the process. Most of the existing HWMA schemes are designed based on the assumption of normality. It is well-known that the performance of such monitoring schemes degrades significantly when this assumption is violated. Therefore, in this paper, three distribution-free monitoring schemes are developed based on the Wilcoxon rank-sum W statistic. First, the HWMA W scheme is introduced. Secondly, the double HWMA (DHWMA) W scheme is proposed to improve the ability of the HWMA W scheme in detecting very small disturbances in the location parameter and at last, the hybrid HWMA (HHWMA) W scheme is also proposed because of its flexibility and better performance in detecting shifts of different sizes. The zero-state performances of the proposed schemes are investigated using the characteristics of the run-length distribution. The proposed schemes outperform their existing competitors, i.e. EWMA, CUSUM and DEWMA W schemes, in many situations, and particularly the HHWMA W scheme is superior to these competitors regardless of the size of the shift in the location parameter. Real-life data are used to illustrate the implementation and application of the new monitoring schemes.DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : The data used for the illustration example are available from Mukherjee et al. (2019) (10.1016/j.cie.2019.106059).SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL : S1 Appendix. Properties of the HWMA W scheme. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261217.s001S2 Appendix. Properties of the DHWMA W scheme. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261217.s002S3 Appendix. Properties of the HHWMA W chart.http://www.plosone.orgdm2022Statistic

Novel Mixed EWMA Dual-Crosier CUSUM Mean Charts without and with Auxiliary Information

The classical cumulative SUM (CUSUM) chart is commonly used to monitor a particular size of the mean shift. In many real processes, it is assumed that the shift level varies within a range, and the exact level of the shift size is mostly unknown. For detecting a range of shift size, the dual-CUSUM (DC) and dual-Crosier CUSUM (DCC) charts are used to provide better detection ability as compared to the CUSUM and Crosier CUSUM (CC) charts, respectively. This paper introduces a new mixed exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA)-DCC (EDCC) chart to monitor process mean. In addition, AIB-based EWMA-DC (EDC) and EDCC charts (namely, AIB-EDC and AIB-EDCC charts) are suggested to detect shifts in the process mean level. Monte Carlo simulations are used to compute the run length (RL) characteristics of the proposed charts. A detailed comparison of the proposed schemes with other competing charts is also provided. It turns out that the proposed chart provides better performance than the counterparts when detecting a range of mean shift sizes. A real-life application is also presented to illustrate the implementation of the existing and proposed charts. 2022 Muhammad Arslan et al.Scopu

Univariate and multivariate linear profiles using max type extended exponentially weighted moving average schemes

Many studies have shown that industrial as well as non-industrial business organizations present a growing need of robust and more efficient multivariate monitoring schemes in order to be able to monitor several quality characteristics simultaneous. To monitor two or more parameters simultaneously, several monitoring schemes are used concurrently in most of the cases instead of using a single scheme. Thus, in this paper, the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA), double EWMA (DEWMA) and the recent triple EWMA (TEWMA) procedures are used to develop new single univariate and multivariate Max-type monitoring schemes for linear profiles under the assumptions of fixed and random linear models to monitor the regression parameters and variance error simultaneously. It is observed that the newly proposed schemes are better alternatives of the classical univariate and multivariate EWMA, DEWMA and TEWMA schemes for linear profiles in terms of the average run-length (ARL) and expected ARL profiles. Numerical examples are presented using simulated and real-life data.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6287639Statistic

Design of side-sensitive double sampling control schemes for monitoring the location parameter

Double sampling procedure is adapted from a statistical branch called acceptance sampling. The first Shewhart-type double sampling monitoring scheme was introduced in the statistical process monitoring (SPM) field in 1974. The double sampling monitoring scheme has been proven to effectively decrease the sampling effort and, at the same time, to decrease the time to detect potential out-of-control situations when monitoring the location, variability, joint location and variability using univariate or multivariate techniques. Consequently, an overview is conducted to give a full account of all 76 publications on double sampling monitoring schemes that exist in the SPM literature. Moreover, in the review conducted here, these are categorized and summarized so that any research gaps in the SPM literature can easily be identified. Next, based on the knowledge gained from the literature review about the existing designs for monitoring the process mean, a new type of double sampling design is proposed. The new charting region design lead to a class of a control charts called a side-sensitive double sampling (SSDS) monitoring schemes. In this study, the SSDS scheme is implemented to monitor the process mean when the underlying process parameters are known as well as when they are unknown. A variety of run-length properties (i.e., the 5th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 95th percentiles, the average run-length (), standard deviation of the run-length (), the average sample size () and the average extra quadratic loss () metrics) are used to design and implement the new SSDS scheme. Comparisons with other established monitoring schemes (when parameters are known and unknown) indicate that the proposed SSDS scheme has a better overall performance. Illustrative examples are also given to facilitate the real-life implementation of the proposed SSDS schemes. Finally, a list of possible future research ideas is given with hope that this will stimulate more future research on simple as well as complex double sampling schemes (especially using the newly proposed SSDS design) for monitoring a variety of quality characteristics in the future.StatisticsM. Sc. (Statistics