Effects of random shifts of testing equipment on process control system design and selection of process control policies

This paper studies issues associated with designing process control systems when the testing equipment is subjected to random shifts. We consider a production process with two states: in control and out of control. The process may shift randomly to the out-of-control state over time. The process is monitored by periodically sampling finished items from the process. The equipment used to test sampled items also is assumed to have two states and may shift randomly during the testing process. We formulate a cost model for finding the optimal process control policy that minimizes the expected unit time cost. Numerical results show that shifts of the testing equipment may significantly affect the performance of a process control policy. We also studied the effects of the testing equipment's shifts on the selection of process control policies.