Testing process capability based on C _pm in the presence of random measurement errors

Process capability indices have been widely used in the manufacturing industry providing numerical measures on process performance. The index C _p provides measures on process precision (or product consistency). The index C _pm , sometimes called the Taguchi index, meditates on process centring ability and process loss. Most research work related to C _p and C _pm assumes no gauge measurement errors. This assumption insufficiently reflects real situations even with highly advanced measuring instruments. Conclusions drawn from process capability analysis are therefore unreliable and misleading. In this paper, we conduct sensitivity investigation on process capability C _p and C _pm in the presence of gauge measurement errors. Due to the randomness of variations in the data, we consider capability testing for C _p and C _pm to obtain lower confidence bounds and critical values for true process capability when gauge measurement errors are unavoidable. The results show that the estimator with sample data contaminated by the measurement errors severely underestimates the true capability, resulting in imperceptible smaller test power. To obtain the true process capability, adjusted confidence bounds and critical values are presented to practitioners for their factory applications.