Abstract
In today’s highly developed manufacturing industry, process capability indices are effective means of measuring process performance. Most process capability indices have been developed under the assumption that the quality characteristics are normally distributed. However, the lifetime data of products generally may possess an exponential, gamma or Weibull distribution and so forth. A lifetime performance index was proposed and used as a means of measuring performance of product lifetime, which is a larger-the-better type quality characteristic and usually possess a non-normal distribution. Acceptance sampling plans are practical tools for quality management applications and provide the producer and the consumer a general rule for lot sentencing to meet their requirements of product quality. And an acceptance sampling plan for lifetime performance is also called life-test sampling plan. In this study, we developed life-test sampling plans based on the lifetime performance index for Weibull lifetime products in the conditions of complete sampling data and upper record data. And for the practical purpose, this study tabulated the plan parameters for various combinations of acceptable and rejectable quality levels, producer’s risks and consumer’s risks. Thus, practitioners can easily understand the number of product items required for inspection and the corresponding critical value for making decisions on product acceptance determination. Finally, life testing procedures are provided to illustrate the use of the developed life-test sampling plan.