Introduction to Operations Management - I

Prof. B Mahadevan
Practice Problems

Module 5 – Quality
Practice Problems

1. A pharmaceutical company fills a drug which is in a powder form into a bottle. It has an automated
process consisting of a filling machine and a sealing unit. After filling the bottle, it is automatically
sealed with a metallic cap. To monitor the quality of the process, samples of size 5 are drawn
periodically from the process and the quantity filled is measured. The table below has data on 12
such observations.

Sample 1 2 3 4 5

1 9.21 8.87 8.71 9.08 9.34

2 9.06 8.97 9.13 8.46 8.85

3 9.35 8.95 9.20 9.03 8.44

4 9.21 8.71 9.05 9.35 8.87

5 9.01 9.17 9.21 9.05 9.53

6 8.74 8.35 8.50 9.06 8.89

7 9.21 9.05 9.00 8.78 9.23

8 9.15 9.20 9.23 9.15 9.06

9 8.98 8.81 8.90 9.13 9.05

10 9.03 9.10 9.26 9.44 8.48

11 9.49 9.05 9.12 8.88 8.93

12 8.95 9.10 9.02 9.04 8.96

(a) Establish the upper and lower control limits for the X bar chart and the R Chart
(b) Construct a control chart and investigate if the process is in control
Values for setting the control charts are A2 = 0.577, D3 = 0, D4 = 2.114

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Mahadevan B and is permitted for use only within the course
Introduction to Operations Management-1 delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including
any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 Introduction to Operations Management - I
Prof. B Mahadevan
Practice Problems

2. In the above example the organization wants to also assess the process of fitting the caps. Let us
assume that the samples are drawn after the process and a count is made of the number of
defective metallic caps per batch. The table below has details of the number of defective caps in
the last ten batches. Assume that the batch size is 100.

Batch no. Number of defects

1 12

2 8

3 11

4 14

5 12

6 23

7 7

8 10

9 16

10 6

(a) What type of control chart will you recommend for controlling the quality of the cap fitting
process?
(b) Compute the relevant parameters for the chart and plot the data in the chart.
(c) Is the process in control? If not, revise the control chart by recomputing the chart
parameters.
3. The critical design specification for the manufacture of a component is the length of the
component. The current specifications are 15  0.05 cms. The organization currently employs a
manufacturing process with the process centre at 14.98 and a standard deviation of 0.02.

(a) What is the process capability of the process?

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Mahadevan B and is permitted for use only within the course
Introduction to Operations Management-1 delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including
any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 Introduction to Operations Management - I
Prof. B Mahadevan
Practice Problems

Answers to the problems

1 (a) Mean of X bar = 9.019, Mean of Range = 0.562;

2 (a) p-chart
(b) Mean of the chart = 0.119; s.d. = 0.032; LCL = 0.023; UCL = 0.215
(c) The process is not in control as “data point 6” is outside the limits. After removing
this data point and re-computing, the revised values are LCL = 0.014; UCL = 0.199

3. (a) 0.12; (b) Potential Capability (Cp) = 0.833, Actual Capability (Cpk) = 0.50; They
are not the same as the process is not aligned with the target

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Mahadevan B and is permitted for use only within the course
Introduction to Operations Management-1 delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including
any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.