Mar 2 2019
The Math Behind The Process Behavior Chart
Ever since asking Is SPC Obsolete? on this blog almost 6 years ago, multiple sources have told me that the XmR chart is a wonderful and currently useful process behavior chart, universally applicable, a data analysis panacea, requiring no assumption on the structure of the monitored variables. So I dug into it and this what I found.
Mar 12 2019
More About the Math of the Process Behavior Chart
In statistics on time series with “moving” in their name, each value is correlated with past and future neighbors — that is, the series is autocorrelated. It affects the way you can use these statistics to detect anomalies and issue alarms.
The moving range in the XmR chart is a case in point. Its autocorrelation in the moving range chart is self-inflicted. It is autocorrelated by construction, regardless of whether the raw data themselves are.
Some raw data are autocorrelated. For example, when you issue a replenishment order for a part by pulling a Kanban from a bin, you are assuming that the demand for a coming period to match that of the period that just elapsed, with minor fluctuations. Implicitly, you are leveraging the autocorrelation of the part consumption across periods.
On the other hand, if a physical characteristic of a manufactured part is the sum of a constant and noise, then the noises are independent, and therefore uncorrelated. Taking moving ranges introduces an autocorrelation between consecutive values that is absent in the raw data.
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By Michel Baudin • Data science • 6 • Tags: Autoregression, Control Charts, SPC, XmR