Estimating the PCIs for 10d Nail Production process in view of ASTM International Standards

With the ever-increasing demand for quality/standardized products and the desire for a local manufacturer of flat head 10d nails to push its product into the international market, there is a need to adopt its product specification into the more and widely accepted ASTM standard for nail length, in the production of flat head 10d nails. Process Capability Indices (PCIs) was used to estimate the ability of the 10d nail manufacturing process to meet the ASTM standard by collecting 250 samples of manufactured flathead 10d nails in sample sizes of 10 from the process. A digital vernier caliper was used to collect data, and the Minitab 20 statistical software package was used for data analysis. The PCIs such as the Cp (1.04), Cpk (0.36), and Cpm (0.46) and a process fall out of 13.45% indicates that the process is inadequate and requires improvement and proper centering to improve the process yield in view of ASTM standard. This requires targeted interventions, such as realigning the process mean to improve process yield and to design control charts for continuous process monitoring to detect unwanted process shift.