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In most modern manufacturing systems, products are often the output of some multistage processes. In these processes, the stages are dependent on each other, where the output quality of each stage depends also on the output quality of the previous stages. This property is called the cascade property. Although there are many studies in multistage process monitoring, there are fewer works on profile monitoring in multistage processes, especially on the variability monitoring of a multistage profile in Phase-I for which no research is found in the literature. In this paper, a new methodology is proposed to monitor the standard deviation involved in a simple linear profile designed in Phase I to... 

In most modern manufacturing systems, products are often the output of several correlated stages. Nevertheless, quality of a product or process in both single and multistage processes is usually expressed by a single quality characteristic, two or more characteristics, or profiles. Although there are many studies in univariate and multivariate-multistage process monitoring, fewer works focus on profile monitoring of multistage processes. This paper addresses the problem of monitoring a simple linear profile that is going through a multistage process in phase II. Using a first-order autoregressive correlation model, the relationship between the stages is first modeled. Then, the cascade... 

In this article, the general linear profile-monitoring problem in multistage processes is addressed. An approach based on the U statistic is first proposed to remove the effect of the cascade property in multistage processes. Then, the T2 chart and a likelihood ratio test (LRT)-based scheme on the adjusted parameters are constructed for Phase-I monitoring of the parameters of general linear profiles in each stage. Using simulation experiments, the performance of the proposed methods is evaluated and compared in terms of the signal probability for both weak and strong autocorrelations, for processes with two and three stages, as well as for two sample sizes. According to the results, the... 

Today's competitive market has witnessed a growing interest in improving the reliability of products in both service and industrial operations. A large number of monitoring schemes have been introduced to effectively control the reliability-related quality characteristics. These methods have focused on single-stage processes or considered quality variables which are independent. However, the main feature of multistage processes is the cascade property which needs to be justified for the sake of optimal process monitoring. The problem becomes complicated when the presence of censored observations is pronounced. Therefore, both the effects of influential covariates and censored data must be... 

Nowadays, many manufacturing and service systems provide products and services to their customers in several consecutive stages of operations, in each of which one or more quality characteristics of interest are monitored. In these environments, the final quality in the last stage not only depends on the quality of the task performed in that stage but also is dependent on the quality of the products and services in intermediate stages as well as the design parameters in each stage. In this paper, a novel methodology based on the posterior preference approach is proposed to robustly optimize these multistage processes. In this methodology, a multi-response surface optimization problem is... 

This paper addresses the problem of robust parameter estimation of simple linear profiles in multistage processes in the presence of outliers in Phase I. In this regard, two robust approaches, namely the Huber’s M-estimator and the MM estimator, are proposed to estimate the parameters of the process in Phase I in the presence of outliers in historical data. In addition, the U statistic is applied to the robust parameter estimates to remove the effect of the cascade property in multistage processes and as a result, to obtain adjusted robust estimates of the parameters of simple linear profiles. The performance of the proposed methods is evaluated under weak and strong autocorrelations... 

This paper addresses the problem of robust parameter estimation of simple linear profiles in multistage processes in the presence of outliers in Phase I. In this regard, two robust approaches, namely the Huber’s M-estimator and the MM estimator, are proposed to estimate the parameters of the process in Phase I in the presence of outliers in historical data. In addition, the U statistic is applied to the robust parameter estimates to remove the effect of the cascade property in multistage processes and as a result, to obtain adjusted robust estimates of the parameters of simple linear profiles. The performance of the proposed methods is evaluated under weak and strong autocorrelations... 

This paper addresses the problem of robust parameter estimation of simple linear profiles in multistage processes in the presence of outliers in Phase I. In this regard, two robust approaches, namely the Huber’s M-estimator and the MM estimator, are proposed to estimate the parameters of the process in Phase I in the presence of outliers in historical data. In addition, the U statistic is applied to the robust parameter estimates to remove the effect of the cascade property in multistage processes and as a result, to obtain adjusted robust estimates of the parameters of simple linear profiles. The performance of the proposed methods is evaluated under weak and strong autocorrelations... 

Multistage process surveillance is considered to effectively improve the product reliability in manufacturing or service operations. To this end, the process output is commonly inspected under specific conditions and the values of the reliability-related quality characteristic are measured. However, in some cases, the observations from the process output are autocorrelated. This brings about the situation where the use of existing monitoring schemes is futile. Therefore, a class of survival analysis regression models called the proportional hazards (PH) model has been modified to justify the effect of cascade property in line with the autocorrelation issue. Subsequently, three monitoring... 

When a multistage manufacturing process is monitored statistically, the cascade property results in a more complicated condition compared to the case when a single-stage process is controlled. The cascade property usually exists in different stages of a multistage process, where the quality of a stage influences the performance of the next stage. Moreover, sometimes the quality of a product/process is best characterized by a functional relationship. This relationship is referred to as a profile. In this paper, phase I monitoring of simple linear profile is addressed for a multistage process involving the cascade property. To aim this, the capabilities of the methods that may be used to... 

When a multistage manufacturing process is monitored statistically, the cascade property results in a more complicated condition compared to the case when a single-stage process is controlled. The cascade property usually exists in different stages of a multistage process, where the quality of a stage influences the performance of the next stage. Moreover, sometimes the quality of a product/process is best characterized by a functional relationship. This relationship is referred to as a profile. In this paper, phase I monitoring of simple linear profile is addressed for a multistage process involving the cascade property. To aim this, the capabilities of the methods that may be used to... 

In some quality control applications, processes consist of multiple components, stations or stages to finish the final products or the services. Some quality characteristics in each stage of these processes (called multistage processes) can be represented by a relationship between a response and one or more explanatory variables which is named as profile. In this paper, a general model is proposed for monitoring multivariate profiles in multistage processes. To this aim, the multivariate form of the U transformation approach is first used to remove the effect of the cascade property between the stages. Then, three control schemes are employed to monitor the parameters of multivariate simple... 

In this paper, maximum likelihood step-change point estimators of the location parameter, the out-of-control sample and the out-of-control stage are developed for auto-correlated multistage processes. To do this, the multistage process and the concept of change detection are first discussed. Then, a time-series model of the process is presented. Assuming step changes in the location parameter of the process, next, the likelihood functions of different samples before and after receiving out-of-control signal from an X-bar control chart were derived under different conditions. The maximum likelihood estimators were then obtained by maximizing the likelihood functions. Finally, the accuracy and... 

In recent years, much attention has been given to monitoring multistage processes in order to effectively improve the product reliability. To this end, the output of the process is investigated under special circumstances, and the values corresponding to reliability-related quality characteristic are measured. However, analyzing reliability data is quite complicated because of their unique features such as being censored and obeying nonnormal distributions. A more sophisticated picture arises when the observations of the process are autocorrelated in some cases, which makes the application of previous control procedures futile. In this paper, the accelerated failure time (AFT) regression...