Simultaneous process mean and process tolerance determination with adjustment and compensation for precision manufacturing process

Conventional process planning of manufacturing operations presets fixed process means and process tolerances for all operations and allows outputs to be distributed around these fixed values, as long as the final outputs meet acceptable specifications. Most of these approaches consider process means and process tolerances to be independent decision variables in process planning with the resultant process means equal or close to the design targets of the blueprint dimensions. Furthermore, these approaches assume that process variability is small in comparison to the quality requirement, and that the phenomena of process shifting or deterioration are not factors of manufacturing operations. For these reasons, conventional approaches to process planning are inappropriate for high value, and precision manufacturing process, particularly of a complex part. Hence, this study introduces a process optimization model which considers process means and process tolerances simultaneously, with sequential operation adjustment to reduce process variability, and with part compensation to offset process shifting.