Economic designs of two-sided single and double screening procedures

Abstract

Economic designs of single and double screening procedures for improving outgoing product quality based on two screening variables are presented for the case of two-sided specification limits. Two screening variables are observed simultaneously in the single screening procedure. In the double screening procedure, one variable is used first to make one of three decisions — accept, reject, or undecided — and after the first screening, the second variable is employed to screen the undecided items. It is assumed that the performance and the two screening variables are jointly normally distributed, and the deviation of the performance variable from the ‘ideal’ value causes dissatisfication to the consumers. Two quality cost functions — constant and quadratic — are considered. Cost models are constructed which involve screening inspection cost, and costs of accepted and rejected item. Methods of finding the optimal cutoff values are presented and a numerical example is given.