Control limits

Control limits, also known as natural process limits, are horizontal lines drawn on a statistical process control chart, usually at a distance of ±3 standard deviations of the plotted statistic's mean, used to judge the stability of a process.

Control limits should not be confused with tolerance limits or specifications, which are completely independent of the distribution of the plotted sample statistic. Control limits describe what a process is capable of producing (sometimes referred to as the “voice of the process”), while tolerances and specifications describe how the product should perform to meet the customer's expectations (referred to as the “voice of the customer”).

Use

Control limits are used to detect signals in process data that indicate that a process is not in control and, therefore, not operating predictably. A value in excess of the control limit indicates a special cause is affecting the process.

To detect signals one of several rule sets may be used (Control chart § Rules for detecting signals). One specification outlines that a signal is defined as any single point outside of the control limits. A process is also considered out of control if there are seven consecutive points, still inside the control limits but on one single side of the mean.

For normally distributed statistics, the area bracketed by the control limits will on average contain 99.73% of all the plot points on the chart, as long as the process is and remains in statistical control. A false-detection rate of at least 0.27% is therefore expected.

It is often not known whether a particular process generates data that conform to particular distributions, but the Chebyshev's inequality and the Vysochanskij–Petunin inequality allow the inference that for any unimodal distribution at least 95% of the data will be encapsulated by limits placed at 3 sigma.

See also

• Acceptable quality limit
• Control chart § Chart details