Presents an economic approach to inspecting a system consisting of several components, the questions of whether or when it is better to look at it as one unit or to divide it into its components or into subsets of its components. The objective function can be interpreted as the long‐term...

There is a growing need for safety analysis of chemical processes. Risk analysis techniques capable of evaluating dangerous transient conditions together with the reliability of the protective systems need to be devised. Analyses a flash separator used for the raw separation of a naphtha stream...

Presents two production models for maintaining current control of an industrial process under the surveillance of an np ‐control chart. The first model assumes that the process is not allowed to continue in operation during the search for the assignable cause. The second assumes that the...

In 1973, Goel and Wu presented an algorithm for the economic design of cusum charts to control the mean of a process with a normally distributed quality characteristic. They employed the two‐dimensional pattern search technique to determine the optimal values of the sample size, the sampling...

Quality measurements and techniques ‐ for example SPC ‐ can play an important role in achieving high levels of quality. However, in practice, the methods sometimes fail to deliver the expected benefits, for a variety of human and organizational reasons. Draws on three case studies to explore...

Industry spends considerable financial and manpower resources in training operations staff in statistical techniques for quality improvement, but training alone does not necessarily lead to immediate competence. Discusses the various factors which could lead to the success or failure of efforts...