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Process capability indices: The allure and the perils of summarizing process performance in a single index
Department of Industrial Engineering, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.
Luleå University of Technology, Department of Social Sciences, Technology and Arts, Business Administration and Industrial Engineering. Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4222-9631
2025 (English)In: Quality Engineering, ISSN 0898-2112, E-ISSN 1532-4222, Vol. 37, no 4, p. 513-522Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

For many data analytics studies, summarizing the “bottom line” with only a few statistics is very tempting. This is often done to simplify communication and maximize the impact of the outcome. On the other hand, failing to consider the efforts behind the calculations of these statistics, or to fully understand the specifics in data collection and the assumptions used to make the inferences can lead to erroneous conclusions and missed improvement opportunities. The prevalent use of capability indices offers a prime example. These unitless measures of the ratio of the range of the engineering specifications to the natural variation in the process offer a very valuable summary of the capability of the processes yet they are all calculated based on a sample of observations and a set of assumptions. Ignoring all these and just focusing on the point estimates can be misleading. In this Quality Quandaries, we discuss some of the conditions and assumptions in the calculation of these indices, and for the violation of the normality assumption, we present two case studies highlighting potentially problematic issues.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Taylor & Francis, 2025. Vol. 37, no 4, p. 513-522
Keywords [en]
process capability analysis, summary statistics, point estimates, non-normal data, kernel density estimation
National Category
Probability Theory and Statistics
Research subject
Quality Technology & Logistics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-112276DOI: 10.1080/08982112.2025.2482203ISI: 001454901400001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105002047778OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ltu-112276DiVA, id: diva2:1950279
Note

Validerad;2025;Nivå 2;2025-11-13 (u8);

Full text license: CC BY-NC-ND

Available from: 2025-04-07 Created: 2025-04-07 Last updated: 2025-11-14Bibliographically approved

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Kulahci, Murat

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