Process capability analysis for life cycle application

Process capability analysis was used to measure and control the quality level of a process in real exercises for an on-line quality management. There is a deficiency in this type of management, namely the defects which occurred in the production process were only detected and modified afterward, and passively. Generally, improvement by the correction of defects is very costly and inefficient. Hence, there is an attempt to broaden the time frame of process capability analysis from the end of process planning or product design, i.e., on-line application, to the beginning of process planning or product design, i.e., off-line application. In this regard, the present research develops a process capability analysis for the application covering pre-production stage, on-production stage, and post-production stage. The new process capability analysis is extended from conventional C_pm with consideration of the balance between production cost and quality loss.