Cumulative Score Quality Control Procedures for Process Variability

Combined Shewhart‐cumulative score (cuscore) quality control schemes are available for controlling the mean of a continuous production process. In many industrial applications, it is important to control the process variability as well. The proposed combined Shewhart‐cumulative‐score (cuscore) procedure for detecting shifts in process variability uses the procedures developed by Ncube and Woodall (1984) to monitor shifts in the process mean of continuous production processes. It is shown, in the one‐sided case, by average run length comparisons, that the proposed schemes perform significantly better than comparative Shewhart procedures and in some cases even better than cusum schemes when using some process variability quality characteristics.