1. Introduction
Product quality control is an action to ensure that products meet predetermined standards. Statistical Process Control (SPC) is a critical approach to quality management in the modern industrial world [
1]. One of the essential tools in Statistical Process Control (SPC) used to graphically depict the quality characteristics of a product or process is the control chart [
2]. The control chart was first conceived by Walter A. Shewhart in 1924, and it is also known as the Shewhart control chart [
3]. These control charts are used to monitor process quality characteristics to identify specific causes of variability in univariate data [
4]. The Shewhart control chart had shortcomings in dealing with small shifts, so control charts were developed Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) [
5] and Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) [
6] which are good for detecting small shifts in process parameters.
In various subsequent studies, control charts were developed into several types according to the type of data used. Multivariate control charts are a type of control chart that is capable of monitoring data with several characteristics [
7]. The first research on multivariate control charts involved
Hotteling, a control chart used to detect the average vector of a process [
3]. Control charts have also been developed to observe the covariance matrix of a process, such as generalized variance control charts [
8] and successive diference charts [
9].
Along with the development of industrial needs in maintaining product quality, control charts are needed that are able to handle multivariate data simultaneously for both subgroup and individual observations [
10]. There are three types of simultaneous control charts that have been successfully developed, namely Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) type charts [
11], Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) [
12,
13] and Shewhart [
14,
15]. The Maximum Multivariate Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (Max-MEWMA) chart is a robust simultaneous control chart for a multivariate normal distribution, but can only be used to monitor subgroup observations [
16]. The use of Max-MEWMA statistics on subgroups can be considered as a calculation that reflects the maximum value calculated from a combination of historical data and future observations [
17]. The Maximum Multivariate Cumulative Sum (Max-MCUSUM) chart is a simultaneous control chart that can be used to monitor individual and subgroup observations, but the observation data must meet the assumption of a multivariate normal distribution and is a control chart that is sensitive to small process shifts [
18]. Then, Khusna [
19] developed Max-MCUSUM for data containing autocorrelation. The Maximum Multivariate Control Chart (Max-Mchart) chart is a Shewhart type multivariate control chart that combines
Hotelling statistics and generalized variance statistics to be able to simultaneously monitor process variability and averages for large shifts [
20]. Sabahno [
21] developed a novel scheme to simultaneously monitor the mean and variability of multivariate normal processes. However, the distribution used for process variability in cases with more than two dimensions follows a gamma distribution, which, when the number of dimensions exceeds two, is unknown but can be approximately modeled with specific parameters [
22].
The development of the Max-Mchart chart uses a half-normal distribution approach known as the Maximum Half-Normal Multivariate Control Chart (Max-Half-Mchart) control chart [
23]. This modification was made because, in certain cases, the probability value of the Chi-square distribution is close to 0 so that the quantile value of the standard normal distribution has a large negative absolute value and will be detected as an out of control signal on the Max-Mchart chart. A half-normal distribution approach that has original values from 0 to ∞ avoids negative values in calculating quantile values so that it is able to overcome this problem. The Successive Difference statistic was chosen to replace the Generalized Variance statistic so that the Max-Half-Mchart can be applied to individual data. Based on the simulation results, it was found that the Max-Half-Mchart control chart was able to detect small or large shifts in the average and covariance matrix. The Max-Half-Mchart statistic is also consistent with
Hotelling statistics and Successive Difference statistics [
23].
In Max-Half-Mchart, a high percentage of outliers can reduce the effectiveness of the control chart in identifying and detecting data that is outside the control limits . This can be overcome by improving the estimation of the mean vector and covariance matrix so that the control chart can work well. Maleki [
24] showed that control charts with robust mean vector estimators and covariance matrices have much better performance than classical estimators when there are outliers. Minimum Covariance Determinant (MCD) is a well-known robust estimator method [
25]. MCD has better accuracy than other robust estimator methods [
26], [
27]. The way MCD works is by estimating the location and distribution matrix using a subset of a certain size (h) with the lowest sample covariance determinant. Although MCD was introduced in 1984, this method is still rarely used because there are several shortcomings in it, therefore several developments have been made to the MCD method which is able to overcome these problems. Reweighted Minimum Covariance Determinant (RMCD) is an extension of the Minimum Covariance Determinant (MCD) that incorporates generalizations by applying weights based on the ranking of Mahalanobis distances, allowing it to effectively handle intermediate outliers [
18]. Fast Minimum Covarinace Determinant (Fast-MCD) [
28] uses a new algorithm that is able to obtain robust estimators more quickly than the MCD method. Deterministic Minimum Covariance Determinant (Det-MCD) [
29] uses the same iteration steps as Fast-MCD but does not draw random subsets and uses a deterministic algorithm to estimate the location and distribution matrix which is usually faster than Fast-MCD.
To get a good estimator accuracy value using the MCD method, it is recommended to use the number of observations (
) 5 times greater than the number of variables (
) [
29]. This creates limitations on existing estimators in dealing with “fat data”, namely data with a small number of observations (
) compared to the number of variables (
). Minimum Regularized Covariance Determinant (MRCD) is the result of the development of the MCD method which is able to overcome this problem [
30]. MRCD replaces subset-based covariance with estimates of covariance on regularized data [
31]. The MRCD estimator is able to provide good results even when the numbers
[
32].
Based on several ideas explained previously, this research aims to develop a Max-Half-Mchart control chart based on a robust Minimum Regularized Covariance Determinant (MRCD) estimator. This is expected to increase the robustness of the control chart in dealing with outliers in the data and be able to handle cases with a small number of observations compared to a large number of observations. The performance of the proposed MRCD-based Max-Half-Mchart robust control chart is compared with the performance of the Max-Half-Mchart control chart in the application of simulation data and cement quality characteristics data at PT Semen Tonasa.