A Likelihood Ratio Test Approach to Profile Monitoring in Tourism Industry

A new statistical profile monitoring technique to monitor and detect changes in logistic profiles with an application in the tourism industry is presented in this paper. In the statistical process control literature, profile is usually referred to as a relationship between a response variable and one or more explanatory variables. In the tourism case study presented in this paper, time is considered as the explanatory variable and tourism satisfaction as the response variable. The Likelihood ratio test is used as a vehicle to detect any changes in the satisfaction profile in phase II of profile monitoring. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using the average run length criterion. The numerical data indicate satisfactory results for the proposed approach

Modeling and Analysis of Effective Ways for Improving the Reliability of Second-hand Products Sold with Warranty

Often, customers are uncertain about the performance and durability of the used/second-hand products. The warranties play an important role in reassuring the buyer. Offering the warranty implies that the dealer incurs additional costs to service any claims made by the customers. Reducing warranty costs is an issue of great interest to dealers. One way of improving the reliability and reducing the warranty servicing cost for second-hand items is through actions such as overhaul and upgrade which are carried out by the dealer or a third party. Improving actions allow the dealer to offer better warranty terms and to sell the item at a higher price. This paper deals with two effective approaches (virtual age approach and screening test approach) to decide on the reliability improvement strategies for second-hand products sold under various warranty policies (failure-free, rebate warranty, and a combination of free replacement and lump sum). A numerical example illustrates that from a dealer’s point of view, it is beneficial to carry out an improvement action only if the reduction in the warranty servicing cost is greater than the extra cost incurred due to this improvement action

From Profile to Surface Monitoring: SPC for Cylindrical Surfaces Via Gaussian Processes

Quality of machined products is often related to the shapes of surfaces that are constrained by geometric tolerances. In this case, statistical quality monitoring should be used to quickly detect unwanted deviations from the nominal pattern. The majority of the literature has focused on statistical profile monitoring, while there is little research on surface monitoring. This paper faces the challenging task of moving from profile to surface monitoring. To this aim, different parametric approaches and control-charting procedures are presented and compared with reference to a real case study dealing with cylindrical surfaces obtained by lathe turning. In particular, a novel method presented in this paper consists of modeling the manufactured surface via Gaussian processes models and monitoring the deviations of the actual surface from the target pattern estimated in phase I. Regardless of the specific case study in this paper, the proposed approach is general and can be extended to deal with different kinds of surfaces or profiles

Change Point Estimation in Monitoring Survival Time

Precise identification of the time when a change in a hospital outcome has occurred enables clinical experts to search for a potential special cause more effectively. In this paper, we develop change point estimation methods for survival time of a clinical procedure in the presence of patient mix in a Bayesian framework. We apply Bayesian hierarchical models to formulate the change point where there exists a step change in the mean survival time of patients who underwent cardiac surgery. The data are right censored since the monitoring is conducted over a limited follow-up period. We capture the effect of risk factors prior to the surgery using a Weibull accelerated failure time regression model. Markov Chain Monte Carlo is used to obtain posterior distributions of the change point parameters including location and magnitude of changes and also corresponding probabilistic intervals and inferences. The performance of the Bayesian estimator is investigated through simulations and the result shows that precise estimates can be obtained when they are used in conjunction with the risk-adjusted survival time CUSUM control charts for different magnitude scenarios. The proposed estimator shows a better performance where a longer follow-up period, censoring time, is applied. In comparison with the alternative built-in CUSUM estimator, more accurate and precise estimates are obtained by the Bayesian estimator. These superiorities are enhanced when probability quantification, flexibility and generalizability of the Bayesian change point detection model are also considered

Three new multivariate process capability indices

Different multivariate process capability indices are developed by researchers to evaluate process capability when vectors of quality characteristics are considered in a study. This article presents three indices referred to as NCpM, MCpM, and NMCPM in order to evaluate process capability in multivariate environment