Applying statistical process control to the repair process

Statistical Process Control (SPC) is widely used as a tool to control and improve process quality. In general, SPC has not found widespread application in Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) field repair systems. The difficulty in generating test parameter metrics that can be used to efficiently monitor the repair process is a factor that has limited application of SPC to the field repair process. United States Air Force (USAF) Organizational Level (O-Level) and Intermediate Level (I-Level) repair facilities are field facilities and as such, they provide the first opportunity to flag a repair process problem. This paper will demonstrate an approach whereby SPC techniques can be applied to a field repair facility with a specific example provided by an automatic test system used for I-Level support.