Prioritizing processes for better implementation of statistical process control techniques

Statistical process control (SPC) techniques have been widely used in industry. A problem in the implementation of SPC techniques is that usually there are many processes involved in a production line and high priority has to be given to some of them in the face of constraints of available resources. In this paper, the authors discuss some preliminary studies of techniques for process prioritization in SPC implementation and the related decision making approaches. They first present a simple classification scheme based on the statistical and technical importance of each process. Then the use of the quality function deployment (QFD) technique is discussed. A theoretical approach based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique is then recommended to solve the exact prioritization problem.