MODEL-BASED STATISTICAL PROCESS-CONTROL FOR CONTINUOUS SYSTEMS

Statistical process control (SPC) is a set of methodologies for signal ing the presence of undesired sources of variation in manufacturing pr ocesses. SPC methods for continuous processes may be developed by usin g stochastic models which do not assume that successive observations a re independent. A method for applying SPC to continuous processes is p resented. This method incorporates a computationally efficient procedu re for the on-dine identification and estimation of autoregressive wit h exogenous inputs (ARX) models. Two examples illustrating the method for SPC monitoring are presented.