CEP ONLINE: A WEB-ORIENTED EXPERT SYSTEM FOR STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL

ABSTRACT In this paper, a new software for Statistical Process Control (SPC) is proposed. The system, the so-called CEP Online, was developed based on statistical computing resources of well-known free softwares, such as HTML, PHP, R and MySQL under an online server with operating system Linux Ubuntu. The main uni and multivariate SPC tools are available for monitoring and evaluation of manufacturing and non-manufacturing production processes over time. Some advantages of the new software are: (i) low operational cost, since it is cloud-based, only needing a computer connected to the Internet; (ii) easy to use with great interaction with the user; (iii) it does not require investment in any specific hardware or software; (iv) real time reports generation on process condition monitoring and process capability. Thus, the CEP Online offers for SPC practitioners fast, efficient and accurate SPC procedures. Therefore, CEP Online becomes an important resource for those who have no access to non-free softwares, such as SAS, SPSS, Minitab and STATISTICA. To the best of our knowledge, the CEP Online is unique with respect to its characteristics.