A process variability control chart

In this study a Shewhart type control chart namely the V _t chart, is proposed for improved monitoring of the process variability of a quality characteristic of interest Y. The proposed control chart is based on the ratio type estimator of the variance using a single auxiliary variable X. It is assumed that (Y, X) follows a bivariate normal distribution. The design structure of the V _t chart is developed for Phase-I quality control and its comparison is made with those of the S ² chart (a well-known Shewhart control chart) and the V _r chart (a Shewhart type control chart proposed by Riaz (Comput Stat, 2008a) used for the same purpose. It is observed that the proposed V _t chart outperforms the S ² and V _r charts, in terms of discriminatory power, for detecting moderate to large shifts in the process variability. It is observed that the performance of the V _t chart keeps improving with an increase in |ρ _yx | , where ρ _yx is the correlation between Y and X.