A Bayesian approach for verifying process improvement

Paper presented to the 5th Annual Symposium on Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects (GRASP) held at the Hughes Metropolitan Complex, Wichita State University, May 1, 2009.Research completed at the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, College of EngineeringThis research is an effort to introduce the Bayesian approach as a tool for evaluating process adjustments aimed at causing a shift to the process average. This is usually encountered in scenarios where the process is found to be stable and centered away from the design target. A number of changes is proposed and tested as part of the improvement efforts. As such, it is desired to evaluate the effect of these changes as soon as possible and take appropriate actions. Using simulated data, the performance of the proposed approach is measured in terms of the number of measurements (iterations) needed to estimate the true average. The results indicate that the Bayesian approach can be used to verify process improvement