A proposed variable parameter control chart for monitoring the multivariate coefficient of variation

An efficient process monitoring system is important for achieving sustainable manufacturing. The control charting technique is one of the most effective techniques to monitor process quality. In certain processes where the process mean and variance are not independent of one another, the coefficient of variation (CV), which measures the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean, should be monitored. In line with industrial settings, where at least two or more variables are monitored simultaneously in most processes, this paper proposes a variable parameter (VP) chart to monitor the multivariate CV (MCV). Formulae and algorithms to optimize the various performance measures are discussed. The proposed VP MCV chart is designed based on a Markov chain approach. The performance comparison shows that the proposed VP MCV chart prevails over the existing MCV charts, in terms of the average time to signal (ATS), standard deviation of the time of signal (SDTS), and expected average time to signal (EATS) criteria. An example is presented to illustrate the implementation of the proposed VP MCV chart.