Operations Management: Sustainability and Supply Chain Management, Twelfth Edition

Process Capability

Student Tip

Here we deal with whether a process meets the specification it was designed to yield.

Statistical process control means keeping a process in control. This means that the natural variation of the process must be stable. However, a process that is in statistical control may not yield goods or services that meet their design specifications (tolerances). In other words, the variation should be small enough to produce consistent output within specifications. The ability of a process to meet design specifications, which are set by engineering design or customer requirements, is called process capability. Even though that ...