Statistical process control for multistage manufacturing and service operations: A review and some extensions

Manufacturing and service processes today usually involve more than one process stages and operations. With an emphasis on achieving satisfactory product and service quality, multistage processes surveillance and fault diagnosis has become a necessity. Statistical Process Control (SPC) methods have been widely recognised as effective approaches for process monitoring and diagnosis. However, most conventional SPC methods focus on single-stage process without considering the multistage scenario. In this paper, we attempt to offer comprehensive references of statistical control methods for multistage manufacturing and service operations. Existing methods are compared and some future research topics are discussed.