Journal of Quality Technology

A Quarterly Journal of Methods, Applications and Related Topics

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Multivariate Ordinal Categorical Process Control

Based on Log-Linear Modeling

Junjie Wang, Jian Li & Qin Su

To cite this article: Junjie Wang, Jian Li & Qin Su (2017) Multivariate Ordinal Categorical Process
Control Based on Log-Linear Modeling, Journal of Quality Technology, 49:2, 108-122, DOI:
10.1080/00224065.2017.11917983

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00224065.2017.11917983

Published online: 21 Nov 2017.

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Multivariate Ordinal Categorical Process
Control Based on Log-Linear Modeling
JUNJIE WANG
Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China, and
City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

JIAN LI and QIN SU

Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China

In many applications, the quality of products or services tends to be measured by multiple categorical
characteristics, each of which is classified into attribute levels such as good, marginal, and bad. Here there
is usually natural order among these attribute levels. However, traditional monitoring techniques ignore
such order among them. By assuming that each ordinal categorical quality characteristic is determined by
a latent continuous variable, this paper incorporates the ordinal information into an extended log-linear
model and proposes a multivariate ordinal categorical control chart based on a generalized likelihood-ratio
test. The proposed chart is efficient in detecting location shifts and dependence shifts in the corresponding
latent continuous variables of ordinal categorical characteristics based on merely the attribute-level counts
of the ordinal characteristics.

Key Words: Contingency Table; Dependence Shift; Latent Variable; Location Shift; Statistical Process
Control.

1. Introduction ness. They are more desirable to be measured by or-

M ULTIVARIATE statistical process control (SPC)
has been widely exploited to monitor multi-
ple quality characteristics simultaneously. In prac-
tice, numerical data are not always available due to
various constraints such as time and cost (Wang and
Tsung (2007, 2010)). An example is that, on a porce-
lain production line, the quality characteristics of the
porcelain are appearance, translucence, and white-
dinal categorical levels such as perfect, good, and bad
(Taleb (2009)). Note that the attribute levels of each
characteristic follow a sequence from the best to the
worst or the other way around, which makes it rea-
sonable to refer to them as multivariate ordinal cate-
gorical. On the contrary, attribute levels without nat-
ural order are nominal. Hereafter for simplicity, we
call a categorical quality characteristic a “factor”.

In the literature, there is a large amount of control

Mr. Wang is a joint Doctoral Student in the School of
Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University, and the Shenzhen
Research Institute, Department of Systems Engineering and
Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong. His
email is wangjunjie@stu.xjtu.edu.cn.
Dr. Li is Associate Professor in the School of Management
and State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engi-
neering. His email is jianli@xjtu.edu.cn
Dr. Su is Professor in the School of Management and State
Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering. She
is the corresponding author. Her email is qinsu@mail.xjtu.edu
.cn.
charts for monitoring multivariate continuous pro-
cesses. Please see Lowry and Montgomery (1995) and
Bersimis et al. (2007) for a nice overview and Zou and
Tsung (2011) and Zou et al. (2012) for nonparamet-
ric monitoring methods. But the same cannot be said
for multivariate categorical processes. An early con-
tribution was made by Patel (1973), who proposed
a χ2 scheme applyied to multivariate binomial and
Poisson processes by normal approximation. Others
also include the mnp-chart developed by Lu et al.
(1998) and the mp-chart proposed by Chiu and Kuo
(2008). More work was reviewed by Topalidou and

Journal of Quality Technology 108 Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017

 MULTIVARIATE ORDINAL CATEGORICAL PROCESS CONTROL BASED ON LOG-LINEAR MODELING
Psarakis (2009). Most recent developments include
a series of charting techniques developed by Li et
al. (2012, 2014a). They are all based on general-
ized likelihood-ratio test (GLRT) statistics derived
from log-linear models, which incorporate both the
marginal distribution of factors and the dependence
among factors.
The above-mentioned monitoring approaches for
multivariate categorical processes all treat categori-
cal data as nominal, and therefore totally ignore the
order among their attribute levels. In fact, there is a
big difference between ordinal categorical data and
nominal categorical data, which is nonnegligible in
both practice and research. First, there is loss of in-
formation when using traditional charts for monitor-
ing factors regardless of the order among their lev-
els. Second, Agresti (2010) pointed out that there
has been an increasing emphasis on distinguishing
ordinal data from nominal data in categorical data
analysis since 1980, and he illustrated via a simple
example that ordinal analysis can give quite different
and more powerful results than that ignoring such
ordinal information.
As far as we are concerned, there are few moni-
toring methods that exploit the ordinal information
among the attribute levels of a factor. To tackle this
problem, it is reasonable to assume that there is a
latent continuous variable that determines the at-
tribute levels of an ordinal factor by classifying its
numerical value into some attribute level according
to some predefined thresholds or cutting points. With
this assumption, Tucker et al. (2002) employed max-
imum likelihood estimation (MLE) to estimate the
location shift in a guessed underlying continuous dis-
tribution and then proposed a control chart for moni-
toring a single ordinal factor. However, this approach
is computationally intensive and difficult to apply if
d table of dimen-
the number of attribute levels is large. Recently, Li
et al. (2014b) developed a simple ordinal categorical
(SOC) chart for detecting location shifts in the latent
continuous variable of a factor. The SOC chart has
a very simple charting statistic, and it is efficient in
detecting latent location shifts and robust to various
types of latent continuous distributions.
When it comes to multiple ordinal categorical fac-
tors, to the best of our knowledge, there is only
the nonparametric permutation-based control (NPC)
chart proposed by Corain and Salmaso (2014). The
NPC chart needs no estimation of parameters, but it
is computationally intensive due to calculating con-
trol limits at each sampling point. This may not be
Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017
109
suitable for online monitoring and therefore limits
its use in practice. To fill in this research gap, based
on the above latent continuous-variable assumption,
this paper tries to develop a multivariate version of
the SOC chart developed by Li et al. (2014b), namely
the multivariate ordinal categorical (MOC) control
chart. The proposed MOC chart should be efficient
in detecting both the location shifts of latent con-
tinuous variables of multiple ordinal factors and de-
pendence deviations of these underlying continuous
variables. To this end, we borrow the power of log-
linear modeling in incorporating both the marginal
distributions of factors and the dependence among
factors and extend it for exploiting the ordinal in-
formation among attribute levels of factors. Then
combined with the exponentially weighted moving
average (EWMA) scheme, a GLRT statistic can be
derived as the charting statistic of the MOC chart.
The rest of the article is organized as follows.
First, the extended log-linear model is proposed for
incorporating the ordinal information. Then the mul-
tivariate ordinal categorical chart is developed based
on the extended log-linear model, which is followed
by the performance evaluation of the MOC chart and
its comparison with some other methods. Before the
concluding remarks, one real application of the pro-
posed MOC chart is provided to illustrate its im-
plementation. Some numerical proofs are left in the
appendix.
2. Incorporating Ordinal Information
into Log-Linear Modeling
2.1. Multivariate Categorical Process
Assume a multivariate categorical process with d
factors of interest denoted by X = {X1 , . . . , Xd },
each of which, say factor Xi , takes hi (i = 1, . . . , d)
attribute levels ai = 1, . . . , hi . All the level combina-
tions will form a d-way contingency
sion h1 × . . . × hd and with h = i=1 hi cells. Each
observation is a level combination and will fall into
one of the h cells as an observed count. Let pa1 ...ad
be the probability of an observation with level com-
bination a1 , . . . , ad (ai = 1, . . . , hi and i = 1, . . . , d)
or falling into cell (a1 , . . . , ad ), and the counts in cell
(a1 , . . . , ad ) is denoted by na1 ...ad in a sample of size
N . Then the marginal sum counts of factor Xi in
level v, with v = 1, . . . , hi , can be easily calculated as
 
n(i)v = ···
a1 a2 ai−1 ai+1

··· na1 a2 ...ai−1 vai+1 ...ad−1 ad .
ad−1 ad
www.asq.org
110 JUNJIE WANG, JIAN LI, AND QIN SU

Obviously, given the sample size N , the hi marginal or category. For example, factor Xi has three ordi-
sum counts of Xi from n(i)1 to n(i)hi jointly follow the nal levels that are classified by its latent continuous
multinomial distribution MN(N ; p(i)1 , . . . , p(i)hi ), variable Xi∗ according to the following thresholds:
where p(i)v (v = 1, . . . , hi ) is the marginal proba-
excellent Xi∗ ∈ (−∞, 2.5],
bility of factor Xi in level v, with v = 1, . . . , hi , and
can be similarly calculated as acceptable Xi∗ ∈ (2.5, 3],
  unacceptable Xi∗ ∈ (3, +∞).
p(i)v = ···
a1 a2 ai−1 ai+1
 In general, the hi levels of factor Xi are obtained
··· pa1 a2 ...ai−1 vai+1 ...ad−1 ad . by classifying its latent continuous variable Xi∗ into
ad−1 ad hi intervals according to the following thresholds:
When all the factors are considered, the joint dis- −∞ = bi,0 < bi,1 < · · · < bi,hi −1 < bi,hi = +∞.
tribution of the d group of marginal sum counts
n(i)1 , . . . , n(i)hi (i = 1, . . . , d) is a multivariate multi- Given the cumulative density function (CDF) of the
nomial distribution (see Johnson et al. (1997)). Par- latent variable Fi (x∗i ), the probability that a contin-
ticularly, it will simplify into a multivariate binomial uous observation falls into interval (bi,v−1 , bi,v ] in the
distribution if each factor takes only two levels. latent scale is p(i)v = Fi (bi,v ) − Fi (bi,v−1 ), which is
equivalent to the (marginal) probability that a cate-
In the literature, log-linear models have proven gorical observation pertains to level v (v = 1, . . . , hi )
to be convenient and useful in characterizing mul- of factor Xi . Given the sample size N , the (marginal)
tivariate categorical processes. To clarify it, imag- counts n(i)v (v = 1, . . . , hi ) in level v of factor
ine a three-way contingency table with factors X1 , Xi would jointly follow the multinomial distribution
X2 , and X3 taking h1 , h2 , and h3 attribute lev- MN(N ; p(i)1 , . . . , p(i)hi ).
els, respectively. Let ma1 a2 a3 (a1 = 1, . . . , h1 ; a2 =
1, . . . , h2 ; a3 = 1, . . . , h3 ) represent the expected With a single factor, say Xi with hi attribute lev-
count with the level combination of X1 in level a1 , els, the test statistic proposed by Li et al. (2014b)
X2 in level a2 , and X3 in level a3 . Then the log-linear for detecting the location shift of its latent continu-
model is ous variable is
h 
ln ma1 a2 a3 = u(0) + u(1) (2) (3) (1,2) i 
a1 + ua2 + ua3 + ua1 ,a2  
Wi =  (c(i)k + c(i)(k−1) − 1)n(i)k  , (1)
+ u(1,3) (2,3) (1,2,3)  
a1 ,a3 + ua2 ,a3 + ua1 ,a2 ,a3 , k=1

(0) (1) (2) (3)
where u is the overall mean; u , u , and u are
the main effects; u(1,2) , u(1,3) , and u(2,3) are the two-
factor interaction effects; u(1,2,3) is the three-factor
interaction effect. Denote pa1 a2 a3 as the probability
of an observation falling into cell (a1 , a2 , a3 ) and it is
obvious that ma1 a2 a3 = N pa1 a2 a3 given the sample
size N . With a fixed N , the cell counts will jointly
follow a multinomial distribution. It is more conve-
nient to concentrate on pa1 a2 a3 instead of ma1 a2 a3 ,
and the log-linear model can be rewritten as
ln pa1 a2 a3 = u(0) + u(1) (2) (3) (1,2)
a1 + ua2 + ua3 + ua1 ,a2
+ u(1,3) (2,3) (1,2,3)
a1 ,a3 + ua2 ,a3 + ua1 ,a2 ,a3 .
2.2. Extended Log-linear Models
In terms of describing ordinal information, it is
natural and efficient to assume an unobservable con-
tinuous variable underlying the factor of interest
(Tucker et al. (2002)). This latent continuous variable
determines the ordinal attribute level of the factor
by classifying its numerical value into some interval
Journal of Quality Technology
k
where c(i)k = j=1 p(i)j (k = 1, . . . , hi ) with c(i)0 =
0 is the cumulative probability up to level k of fac-
tor Xi , and n(i)k is the observed count in level k.
This statistic can be regarded as assigning differ-
ent scores to each level to induce a weighted sum
of the observed ordinal-level counts. Although it is
obtained under the assumption that the latent con-
tinuous variable follows a logistic distribution, the
proposed chart is easy to build and shows robustness
to various types of underlying distributions, such as
normal and Gamma.
Back to multivariate ordinal categorical processes,
it is intuitive to separately construct a chart for each
factor Xi with a test statistic Wi (i = 1, . . . , d) in-
troduced above, and totally the d statistics combine
a multi chart. However, this method fails to incor-
porate the dependence between factors, and fixing
its in-control (IC) average run length (ARL) is non-
trivial (see Woodall and Ncube (1985)). In order to
borrow the power of log-linear models in incorporat-
ing multiple categorical variables, fortunately we find
Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017
 MULTIVARIATE ORDINAL CATEGORICAL PROCESS CONTROL BASED ON LOG-LINEAR MODELING 111

that the test statistic in Equation (1) is equivalent considering multiple ordinal factors simultaneously.
to the likelihood-ratio test statistic derived from a To be specific, for each factor Xi (i = 1, . . . , d) in a
modified log-linear model with only one factor. multivariate categorical setting, we may construct a
novel log-linear model in a similar way, which is
To be specific, consider a log-linear model involv-
ing only factor Xi . Originally, the log-linear model ln pa1 ...ad = β0 + β1 s(1)a1 + . . . + βd s(d)ad
should be

d
(0) (i) = β0 + βi s(i)ai . (3)
ln p(i)k = u + uk , k = 1, . . . , hi ,
hi (i)
with k=1 p(i)k = 1. If we let uk = βi s(i)k with
s(i)k = c(i)k + c(i)(k−1) − 1,
where βi is a coefficient that relates the main effect
of factor Xi to its marginal probability, the above
log-linear model is modified into
ln p(i)k = β0 + βi s(i)k ,
where β0 is the same as the intercept u(0) . Compared
with the original one, this modified log-linear model
is more parsimonious and contains less parameters or
coefficients, which are only one independent parame-
(i)
ter βi . Replacing uk with βi s(i)k exploits the ordinal
information among the attribute levels of factor Xi ,
where it is the latent continuous variable Xi∗ that
makes factor Xi ordinal. In fact, the −2LRT statis-
tic for testing if there is any deviation in βi of model
(2) has the form Wi2 /U with U as a constant, which
is equivalent to that in Equation (1) for testing if
there is any location shift in the latent variable Xi∗ .
The proof can be found in Appendix A.
Here s(i)k (k = 1, . . . , hi ) have intuitive meanings,
which represent some type of standardized ranks of
i=1
This model considers the main effects of each factor
Xi on the probability of an observation falling into
cell (a1 , . . . , ad ) or with the attribute level combina-
tion a1 , . . . , ad .
However, model (3) considers only the main ef-
fects, which implies that the d factors are indepen-
(2)
dent of each other. This is not always the case. To
account for the association among factors, apart from
main effects, we include only two-factor interaction
effects and neglect higher-order interaction. First,
two-factor interaction effects represent the associa-
tion between each pair of factors, such as u(i,j) ac-
counting for the dependence between Xi and Xj .
Second, lower-order effects are more likely to occur
and play a more important role than higher-order
effects, which is common consideration in many ap-
plications, such as design of experiments (Wu and
Hamada (2000)) and SPC (Li et al. (2012)). Even if
some higher-order effects should indeed be included
in the model, it is sufficient for monitoring purposes
with only main effects and two-factor interaction ef-
fects. Third, as an overview of modeling ordinal cate-
gorical data, Agresti (2010) put emphasis on describ-
the observations in level k of factor Xi . To be specific, ing the association between only two ordinal factors.
hi
we arrange the k=1 n(i)k observations of Xi from
level 1 to level hi , and the n(i)k observations in level To incorporate the ordinal information among the
k−1 k attribute levels of factors into the two-factor interac-
k take the positions j=1 n(i)j + 1, . . . , j=1 n(i)j .
Because all the observations in the same level should tion effects, Haberman (1974) provided a linear-by-
have the same rank, we assign the average linear (L×L) association model to characterize the
 k−1 of the association between two ordinal factors based on log-
above as the rank of level k, which is ( j=1 n(i)j +
 k linear modeling. Here the two-factor interaction ef-
1 + j=1 n(i)j )/2. By dividing the above rank by the (i,j)
fect uai ,aj of Xi and Xj is expressed by the product
total size and letting the total size tend to infinity,
of one coefficient and two scores each for one factor.
the standardized rank of observations in level k in
Here we take s(i)ai as the score of factor Xi in level
the population can be defined as (c(i)(k−1) + c(i)k )/2
ai , which satisfies some required constraints of the
lying between [0, 1], which can further be converted
scores suggested by Agresti (2010), and the interac-
to s(i)k = c(i)(k−1) + c(i)k − 1 lying between [−1, 1]
hi tion effect should be
and satisfying k=1 s(i)k p(i)k = 0. One can refer to
Ding et al. (2016) for details. u(i,j)
ai ,aj = βi,j s(i)ai s(j)aj .

The equivalence between testing any deviation in Ultimately, the extended log-linear model that incor-
βi of model (2) and testing any latent location shift porates the ordinal information among the attribute
in Xi∗ by Equation (1) provides us convenience of levels of factors should be

Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017 www.asq.org

112 JUNJIE WANG, JIAN LI, AND QIN SU

ln pa1 ...ad representation of the extended log-linear model (4).

By denoting p = [p1...1 , p1...2 , . . . , ph1 ...hd−1 , ph1 ...hd ]T

d 
d−1 
d
of dimension h × 1, its matrix form is
= β0 + βi s(i)ai + βi,j s(i)ai s(j)aj , (4)
i=1 i=1 j=i+1 
d 
d−1 
d

 ln p = 1β0 + yi βi + yi,j βi,j , (5)

with a1 ,...,ad pa1 ...ad = 1.
Compared with the original log-linear model,
model (3) actually expresses the main effect of each
factor Xi by βi s(i)k (k = 1, . . . , hi ) and, therefore,
reduces
i=1 i=1 j=i+1
where 1 is a column vector with 1 as all its entries
and appropriate dimension, yi and yi,j both of di-
mension h × 1 are designed vectors consisting of ele-
d the number of independent parameters from
i=1 i −1) to d, which is more parsimonious. Thus,
(h
model (3) may not be a good choice for characteriz-
ing well the relationship between cell probabilities
in the multi-way contingency table and the associ-
ated factor levels. Instead, it is actually constructed
to derive the −2LRT statistic for testing if its co-
efficients βi (i = 1, . . . , d) shift, which is equivalent
to testing any location shift in the joint distribution
of the latent continuous variables X1∗ , . . . , Xd∗ . Simi-
larly, model (4) also serves to derive a −2LRT statis-
tic, which is Equation (7) later.
3. Multivariate Ordinal
Categorical Chart
3.1. Matrix Form of the Extended Log-Linear
Model
The extended log-linear model in Equation (4) in-
corporates both the marginal distributions and the
dependence among factors and the ordinal informa-
tion among the attribute levels of each factor is also
exploited. We have known that monitoring a main-
effect coefficient, say βi , is equivalent to detecting if
there is any location shift in the latent continuous
variable Xi∗ of factor Xi . Likewise, any deviation in
the two-factor interaction-effect coefficient βi,j cor-
responds to the shift in the dependence of the latent
continuous variables Xi∗ and Xj∗ of factors Xi and
Xj , respectively. Therefore, we may combine the de-
tection of all the coefficients including the main ef-
fect ones β1 , . . . , βd and the two-factor interaction
ones β1,2 , . . . , βd−1,d to monitor if there are any lo-
cation shifts or dependence shifts in the latent joint
continuous distribution of the underlying variables
X1∗ , . . . , Xd∗ . In addition, it should be kept in mind
that the monitoring task only relies on the cell counts
such as na1 ...ad in cell (a1 , . . . , ad ) and that we can-
not have any specific values of the latent variables
X1∗ , . . . , Xd∗ nor the underlying thresholds that clas-
sify each Xi∗ into some attribute level ai .
Before deriving the charting statistic of the pro-
posed control chart, it is beneficial to give a matrix
Journal of Quality Technology
ments such as s(i)ai and s(i)ai s(j)aj , respectively. To
construct them, first we denote the column vector
with elements all equal to 1 and of dimension hi × 1
by 1hi and denote the score vector of factor Xi by
s(i) = [s(i)1 , . . . , s(i)hi ]T .
Then we have, e.g,
y1 = s(1) ⊗ 1h2 ⊗ 1h3 . . . ⊗ 1hd−2 ⊗ 1hd−1 ⊗ 1hd ,
y2 = 1h1 ⊗ s(2) ⊗ 1h3 . . . ⊗ 1hd−2 ⊗ 1hd−1 ⊗ 1hd ,
yd = 1h1 ⊗ 1h2 ⊗ 1h3 . . . ⊗ 1hd−2 ⊗ 1hd−1 ⊗ s(d) ,
y1,2 = s(1) ⊗ s(2) ⊗ 1h3 . . . ⊗ 1hd−2 ⊗ 1hd−1 ⊗ 1hd ,
y3,d−1 = 1h1 ⊗ 1h2 ⊗ s(3) . . . ⊗ 1hd−2 ⊗ s(d−1) ⊗ 1hd ,
where ⊗ is the Kronecker product operator. There-
fore, we may summarize the rule of constructing
yi and yi,j . Given the basic column vector 1h1 ⊗
1h2 . . . ⊗ 1hd−1 ⊗ 1hd , replace 1hi with s(i) for yi , and
replace 1hi and 1hj with s(i) and s(j) , respectively,
for yi,j . Furthermore, letting
Y = [y1 , . . . , yd , y1,2 , y1,3 , . . . , yd−2,d , yd−1,d ] ,
T
β = [β1 , . . . , βd , β1,2 , β1,3 , . . . , βd−2,d , βd−1,d ] ,
the log-linear model in Equation (5) can be rewritten
as
ln p = 1β0 + Yβ subject to 1T p = 1. (6)
3.2. Proposed Chart
Usually, there are two phases involved in usage of
control charts. In phase I, the process data receive
retrospective analysis to detect and correct unusual
patterns. In the end, a clean dataset will be obtained
and utilized to estimate parameters that represent
the IC process performance. In phase II, these IC
parameters will be employed as reference to deter-
mine if the process goes out of control (OC). It is
common to measure the performance of a phase II
chart with average run length (ARL), which is the
average number of samples that has been collected
before an OC signal is triggered. With the same IC
ARL, the chart with a smaller OC ARL performs bet-
ter because it can detect the shift faster. This paper
intends to propose a phase II chart for multivariate
Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017
 MULTIVARIATE ORDINAL CATEGORICAL PROCESS CONTROL BASED ON LOG-LINEAR MODELING
ordinal categorical process without loss of the ordinal
information among the attribute levels of factors.
Here we assume that the IC cell probability vec-
tor p(0) of dimension h × 1 is known or has been
estimated from an IC dataset by dividing the IC cell
count vector by the IC dataset size, where the super-
script (0) represents the IC state. Furthermore, the
(0)
IC marginal probabilities p(i)ai of factor Xi in level
ai (i = 1, . . . , d and ai = 1, . . . , hi ) can be calcu-
lated naturally, and the IC cumulative probabilities
(0) (0) (0)
c(i)ai , the scores s(i)ai = c(i)ai + c(i)(ai −1) − 1, and
the design matrix Y are also obtained. In addition,
= μ(0) or Σ
= Σ(0) .
later we will see that there is no need to know the
IC coefficient vector β (0) . We intend to monitor if
there is any shift in the location parameters or the
dependence of the latent continuous variables of the
ordinal factors based on merely the cell counts in the
multi-way contingency table formed by the factors.
With the above-mentioned IC parameters, we may
construct the proposed chart.
To this end, it is reasonable to assume that the
unobservable random vectors x∗t = [X1t ∗ ∗ T
, . . . , Xdt ]
of these latent continuous variables are sequentially
collected from the following change-point model

i.i.d. G(0) (x∗ , μ(0) , Σ(0) ), for t ≤ τ ,
x∗t ∼
G(1) (x∗ , μ(1) , Σ(1) ), for t > τ ,
where G(0) and G(1) are the IC and OC joint distribu-
= β (0) ,
tions of the latent continuous variables X1∗ , . . . , Xd∗ ,
with μ(0) and μ(1) as their location parameter vec-
tors and Σ(0) and Σ(1) as their correlation matrixes,
and τ is the unknown change point. At the change-
point, the multivariate ordinal categorical process
may shift in at least one of the location parame-
ter vector and the correlation matrix. However, in
practice, we cannot observe the specific values of x∗t .
Instead, we can collect only the attribute levels of
each factor, say Xit = ai (i = 1, . . . , d) at time point
t. Given the phase II sample size N , for the kth sam-
ple consisting of N sequential attribute-level vectors
from time point t = (k − 1)N + 1 to time point
t = kN , we can calculate and summarize the cell
counts na1 ...ad ,k with each level combination a1 , . . . ,
ad (ai = 1, . . . , hi ) to form a cell count vector nk of
dimension h × 1 and satisfying 1T nk = N .
In order to see how the cell counts in the d-way
contingency table, such as nk , reflect the shifts from
G(0) to G(1) , we may take the marginal probabili-
ties of factor Xi for illustration. In the IC state, they
(0)
follow the multinomial distribution MN(N ; p(i)1 , . . . ,
Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017
113
(0) (0) (0) (0)
p(i)hi ) with p(i)v = Fi (bi,v ) − Fi (bi,v−1 ). At the
change point, if there is only a location shift in the
underlying continuous variable Xi∗ that changes the
(0) (1) (0)
location parameter from μi to μi = μi + δ, the
marginal probabilities of factor Xi in the OC state
(1) (0) (0)
would be p(i)v = Fi (bi,v − δ) − Fi (bi,v−1 − δ). Ac-
cording to the change-point model, we are actually
testing the hypothesis regarding the location param-
eter vector μ and the correlation matrix Σ at each
sampling point k,
H0 : μ = μ(0) and Σ = Σ(0)
H1 : μ
The extended log-linear model of Equation (6) is
proposed to characterize multivariate ordinal cate-
gorical processes. The main effects yi βi (i = 1, . . . , d)
in the model reflect the marginal distributions of
factors. In fact, a shift in βi represents a location
shift in the latent continuous variable Xi∗ of fac-
tor Xi . Similarly, the two-factor interaction effects
yi,j βi,j (i = 1, . . . , d − 1; j = i + 1, . . . , d) reflect the
dependence between factors Xi and Xj , and specif-
ically a shift in βi,j echoes a shift in the correlation
coefficient in the latent continuous variables Xi∗ and
Xj∗ . Therefore, to monitor both shifts in μ and Σ
of the joint distribution of the underlying variables
X1∗ , . . . , Xd∗ and to test the above hypothesis, it suf-
fices to test the following hypothesis:
H0 : β = β (0) versus H1 : β
(0) (0)
at each sampling point k, where β (0) = [β1 , . . . , βd ,
(0) (0)
β1,2 , . . . , βd−1,d ]T is the coefficient vector in the log-
linear model of Equation (6) that represents the IC
state of the process.
The GLRT can be employed to develop a −2LRT
statistic for the above hypothesis (Anderson (2003)),
which is
1
Qk = (nk − N p(0) )T Y(YT Λ(0) Y)−1 YT
N
× (nk − N p(0) ). (7)
Its derivation can be found in Appendix B. Here
Λ(0) = diag(p(0) ) − p(0) pT (0) represents the IC co-
variance matrix (Agresti (2010)), where diag(a) is
the diagonal square matrix with the column vector a
as its diagonal elements. We can see the test statistic
does not contain the IC coefficient vector β (0) , and
only Y and p(0) are required.
To make the fullest of the information in both the
past and current samples, the EWMA scheme is em-
ployed to construct a phase II control chart. Given
www.asq.org
114 JUNJIE WANG, JIAN LI, AND QIN SU
the smoothing parameter 0 < λ ≤ 1, the exponen-
tially weighted sum of the observation vector at sam-
pling point k is
zk = (1 − λ)zk−1 + λnk .
Hence, the finalized charting statistic is
1
Rk = (zk − N p(0) )T Y(YT Λ(0) Y)−1 YT
N
× (zk − N p(0) ).
The control limit L can be determined by simulation
with bisection search, the framework of which can
be found in the appendix of Dickinson et al. (2014).
With Rk > L, the chart triggers an OC signal. Here-
after, the proposed chart is named the multivariate
ordinal categorical (MOC) control chart. As would be
expected, the advantage of the MOC chart should lie
in detecting shifts occurring in the parameters of the
joint latent distribution, such as shifts in the mean
vector μ and the correlation matrix Σ. The joint la-
tent continuous distribution reflects the ordinal infor-
mation between attribute levels of each factor. If the
monitoring focus is not the joint latent distribution,
alternative charts should be considered. Here this pa-
per focuses on only monitoring. The diagnostic task
for identifying shift locations can be developed based
on the framework proposed by Zou et al. (2011).
4. Performance Assessment
This section is to investigate the performance of
the MOC chart by comparing it with alternative
methods. In line with the SPC convention, the IC
ARL is set to be 370 for all the compared charts. All
the ARLs are computed by averaging 10,000 repli-
cations, and a chart with smaller OC ARLs would
outperform others.
4.1. Alternative Methods and Simulation
Settings
= j) is the correlation coefficient be-
Here the log-linear multivariate binomial/multi-
nomial (LMBM) control chart proposed by Li et
al. (2014a) is chosen for comparison because it is
also based on log-linear modeling and can incorpo-
rate multivariate categorical processes that consist of
multivariate binomial and multivariate multinomial
processes. Basically, the LMBM chart is constructed
based on the IC hierarchy structure of the factors,
which is derived by variable selection and represents
the association pattern among these factors. In phase
II, given the exponentially weighted sum of observa-
tion vector zk , we may further obtain the MLE of the
cell count expectation vector w  k at sampling point
Journal of Quality Technology
k, then the charting statistic of the LMBM chart is
still the −2LRT statistic
Sk = 2zT  k − ln m(0) ),
k (ln w
where m(0) is the IC cell count expectation vector.
The expectation vector w  k can be efficiently com-
puted by the iteratively proportional fitting algo-
rithm (IPF) (Bishop et al. (2007)). The IPF algo-
rithm can be easily completed by the subroutine
“PRPFT” in Fortran with the IMSL library given
the IC hierarchy structure of a log-linear model. How-
ever, the LMBM chart assumes that the IC hierarchy
structure would remain unchanged in phase II SPC.
Compared with the MOC chart, the LMBM chart
specializes in detecting shifts in main effects and in-
teraction effects of original log-linear models, which
does not assume latent continuous variables of cate-
gorical factors.
Without loss of generality, d = 3 factors with 3,
3, 4 ordinal levels are considered. They will form a
three-way contingency table with 3×3×4 = 36 cells,
which also means there are 36 level combinations. We
evaluate the performance of both charts under three
types of latent three-variate joint distributions: (1)
multivariate normal distribution N3 (0, Ω); (2) mul-
tivariate t distribution t3 (3) with degrees of free-
dom (d.f.) 3; (3) multivariate Gamma distribution
Ga3 (3, 1) with shape parameter 3 and scale param-
eter 1. According to the appendix of Stoumbos and
Sullivan (2002), the multivariate t distribution and
multivariate Gamma distribution can be obtained
based on the multivariate normal distribution. The
covariance matrix Ω associated with N3 (0, Ω), t3 (3),
Ga3 (3, 1) is selected as follows:
⎡ ⎤
1 ρ12 ρ13
Ω = ⎣ ρ12 1 ρ23 ⎦ ,
ρ13 ρ23 1
where the diagonal elements or the variances are all
1, and ρij (i
tween factor Xi and factor Xj . In particular, the co-
variance matrix Ω is identical to the correlation ma-
trix Σ of N3 (0, Ω), but this does not hold for t3 (3)
and Ga3 (3, 1).
The simulation will be conducted in five steps: (1)
choose a multivariate distribution among the three
underlying joint distributions; (2) set a group of cor-
relation coefficients and cutting points for latent con-
tinuous variables; (3) estimate parameters required
and compute control limits satisfying the predefined
IC ARL; (4)obtain OC ARLs under location shifts
in the latent joint distribution; (5) obtain OC ARLs
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 MULTIVARIATE ORDINAL CATEGORICAL PROCESS CONTROL BASED ON LOG-LINEAR MODELING 115

when the dependence among the latent continuous
variables specified by ρij is changed. For each case,
the hierarchy structure in the IC log-linear model
employed in the LMBM chart is figured out. In addi-
tion, the IC probability vector p(0) is also determined
in advance for both the MOC chart and the LMBM
chart.
Furthermore, with N3 (0, Ω) and t3 (3), the three
ordinal levels of the first factor X1 are classified
by (−∞, −0.7], (−0.7, 1], (1, +∞), those of the sec-
ond factor X2 are classified by (−∞, −1], (−1, 0.5],
(0.5, +∞), and the third factor X3 ’s four ordinal
levels are determined by (−∞, −1.2], (−1.2, 0.3],
(0.3, 2], (2, +∞). For Ga3 (3, 1), the classified inter-
vals are (0, 3], (3, 6], (6, +∞) for the first factor X1 ;
(0, 4], (4, 7], (7, +∞) for the second factor X2 ; and
(0, 3], (3, 5], (5, 7], (7, +∞) for the third factor X3 .
The sample size is chosen to be N = 100 and the
EWMA smoothing parameter λ = 0.1. Moreover,
the IC covariance matrix Ω(0) associated with the
three latent joint distributions N3 (0, Ω), t3 (3), and
(0) (0) (0)
Ga3 (3, 1) has elements ρ12 = ρ21 = 0.2, ρ13 =
(0) (0) (0)
ρ31 = 0.5, ρ23 = ρ32 = 0.8. More comparison re-
sults with other selections of the correlation coeffi-
cients are available from the authors on request.
In the comparison, the OC ARLs with location
shifts occurring in different latent continuous vari-
ables and dependence shifts occurring in different
correlation coefficients in Ω are simulated. With lo-
cation shifts, the location parameter vector would
change from μ(0) to μ(1) = μ(0) + δ . In addition, the
dependence shifts are reflected by shifts in the as-
sociated covariance matrix Ω, which change Σ(0) to
Σ(1) .
4.2. Comparison Results
Table 1 shows the comparison results under the la-
tent joint distribution N3 (0, Ω). We consider location
shifts in each of the three latent variables X1∗ , X2∗ and
X3∗ . For instance, with only a location shift δ = 0.02
in X1∗ , the MOC chart has an OC ARL 199, whereas
the LMBM chart has 266. It is seen that the MOC
chart uniformly outperforms the LMBM chart. This
is especially true for small shifts with |δ| ≤ 0.06. Here
the LMBM chart has the IC hierarchy structure [123]
of the log-linear model. Table 1 also indicates loca-
tion shifts with the same magnitude but different di-
rections (positive or negative) lead to different OC
ARLs. This happens due to the asymmetry of the
classification intervals with regard to 0.
The results under the latent joint distribution
t3 (3) listed in Table 2 also show similar patterns,
which again demonstrate the superiority of the MOC
chart over the LMBM chart. Table 3 lists the results
under the latent joint distribution Ga3 (3, 1), from
which the same conclusion can be drawn. In fact, the
advantage of the MOC chart in detecting location
shifts in the underlying joint distribution is not sur-
prising. Notice that the SOC chart developed by (Li
et al. (2014b)) has powerful performance in detecting
location shifts in the latent continuous variable and,
in fact, the proposed MOC chart would simplify into
the SOC chart if there were a single ordinal factor.

TABLE 1. WOC ARL Comparison with Location Shifts Under N3 (0, Ω)

X1∗ X2∗ X3∗

δ MOC LMBM MOC LMBM MOC LMBM

0.02 199 (1.93) 266 (2.68) 173 (1.68) 251 (2.45) 159 (1.54) 225 (2.27)
0.04 79.1 (0.71) 143 (1.35) 56.9 (0.48) 111 (1.01) 49.3 (0.40) 89.1 (0.81)
0.06 36.5 (0.27) 70.9 (0.61) 26.0 (0.17) 48.7 (0.38) 22.8 (0.14) 39.4 (0.29)
0.08 21.8 (0.14) 38.5 (0.28) 15.9 (0.09) 26.9 (0.17) 14.0 (0.07) 21.9 (0.13)
0.10 15.0 (0.08) 24.9 (0.16) 11.3 (0.05) 17.5 (0.09) 10.0 (0.05) 14.8 (0.07)
−0.02 224 (2.18) 289 (2.85) 172 (1.64) 245 (2.44) 152 (1.46) 234 (2.28)
−0.04 87.4 (0.78) 159 (1.49) 55.9 (0.47) 106 (0.97) 48.2 (0.40) 92.4 (0.82)
−0.06 39.7 (0.30) 77.6 (0.67) 26.1 (0.18) 46.7 (0.36) 22.5 (0.14) 39.9 (0.30)
−0.08 23.0 (0.15) 42.4 (0.31) 15.6 (0.08) 26.0 (0.16) 13.9 (0.07) 22.1 (0.13)
−0.10 15.5 (0.08) 26.4 (0.17) 11.2 (0.05) 17.1 (0.09) 10.0 (0.04) 14.9 (0.07)

NOTE: Standard errors are in parentheses. λ = 0.1. N = 100.

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116 JUNJIE WANG, JIAN LI, AND QIN SU

TABLE 2. WOC ARL Comparison with Location Shifts Under t3 (3)

X1∗ X2∗ X3∗

δ MOC LMBM MOC LMBM MOC LMBM

0.02 247 (2.46) 299 (3.01) 201 (1.96) 273 (2.68) 201 (1.98) 261 (2.58)
0.04 116 (1.07) 194 (1.88) 75.6 (0.67) 143 (1.32) 71.2 (0.62) 127 (1.17)
0.06 57.1 (0.48) 110 (1.01) 34.9 (0.26) 68.7 (0.58) 32.2 (0.23) 59.0 (0.49)
0.08 32.5 (0.23) 63.1 (0.52) 20.6 (0.13) 37.7 (0.27) 18.9 (0.11) 31.9 (0.22)
0.10 21.6 (0.14) 39.4 (0.28) 14.2 (0.07) 24.1 (0.14) 13.0 (0.07) 20.4 (0.12)
−0.02 255 (2.49) 302 (3.00) 213 (2.08) 273 (2.74) 184 (1.76) 256 (2.53)
−0.04 118 (1.09) 192 (1.86) 80.8 (0.72) 144 (1.37) 65.3 (0.55) 126 (1.18)
−0.06 57.3 (0.49) 109 (0.97) 37.3 (0.28) 69.3 (0.58) 30.5 (0.22) 58.6 (0.47)
−0.08 33.2 (0.24) 63.3 (0.52) 21.6 (0.14) 38.0 (0.28) 18.1 (0.11) 32.3 (0.22)
−0.10 22.1 (0.14) 38.5 (0.28) 14.8 (0.08) 24.3 (0.15) 12.7 (0.06) 20.8 (0.12)

NOTE: Standard errors are in parentheses. λ = 0.1. N = 100.

The investigation into the efficiency of the MOC
chart in detecting dependence shifts is conducted
below. The comparison results are demonstrated in
Tables 4, 5, and 6 for the latent joint distribu-
tions N3 (0, Ω), t3 (3), and Ga3 (3, 1), respectively.
Throughout the three tables, the dependence shifts
are induced by changes in the elements ρij of the as-
sociated covariance matrix Ω, i.e., ρ12 , ρ13 , and ρ23 ,
respectively. We see that, except shifts in ρ23 , the
MOC chart responds faster in terms of shorter OC
ARLs and may be in general slightly better than the
LMBM chart. In fact, we should go deep into the in-
sight into the dependence expression of the MOC and
LMBM charts. Both of them employ log-linear mod-
eling, and the difference lies in the design matrixes. In
the MOC chart, the interaction between two factors
is determined by a coefficient, say βi,j for factors Xi
and Xj . However, in the LMBM chart the interaction
between two factors Xi with hi attribute levels and
Xj with hj levels are decided by some terms such as
(i,j)
uai ,aj , and totally there are (hi − 1)(hj − 1) indepen-
dent terms, which is much larger than 1. Therefore,
with a single coefficient describing the dependence,
the MOC chart achieves slightly better performance
in detecting dependence shifts as the LMBM chart
with much more parameters. This shows that the

TABLE 3. WOC ARL Comparison with Location Shifts Under Ga3 (3, 1)

X1∗ X2∗ X3∗

δ MOC LMBM MOC LMBM MOC LMBM

0.05 256 (2.50) 304 (3.02) 234 (2.26) 298 (2.91) 225 (2.22) 289 (2.83)
0.10 123 (1.14) 193 (1.85) 103 (0.95) 185 (1.77) 90.6 (0.82) 163 (1.54)
0.20 34.3 (0.25) 60.0 (0.49) 28.0 (0.19) 56.4 (0.45) 24.1 (0.15) 42.8 (0.32)
0.30 16.6 (0.09) 25.8 (0.15) 13.9 (0.07) 23.8 (0.14) 12.2 (0.06) 19.2 (0.10)
0.50 7.80 (0.03) 10.9 (0.04) 6.77 (0.03) 10.2 (0.04) 6.07 (0.02) 8.74 (0.03)
−0.05 238 (2.34) 296 (2.91) 224 (2.20) 292 (2.89) 205 (2.00) 277 (2.73)
−0.10 114 (1.06) 192 (1.88) 101 (0.93) 184 (1.79) 82.4 (0.73) 153 (1.47)
−0.20 33.2 (0.24) 63.2 (0.54) 28.3 (0.20) 59.9 (0.49) 23.4 (0.15) 43.8 (0.33)
−0.30 16.3 (0.09) 28.4 (0.19) 14.3 (0.07) 27.1 (0.17) 12.2 (0.06) 20.5 (0.12)
−0.50 7.98 (0.03) 13.3 (0.06) 7.08 (0.03) 12.7 (0.06) 6.28 (0.02) 10.1 (0.04)

NOTE: Standard errors are in parentheses. λ = 0.1. N = 100.

Journal of Quality Technology Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017

 MULTIVARIATE ORDINAL CATEGORICAL PROCESS CONTROL BASED ON LOG-LINEAR MODELING 117

TABLE 4. OC ARL Comparison with Dependence Shifts Under N3 (0, Ω)

ρ12 ρ13 ρ23

δ MOC LMBM MOC LMBM MOC LMBM

0.02 185 (1.81) 218 (2.18) 187 (1.81) 260 (2.55) 219 (2.16) 213 (2.01)
0.04 64.6 (0.55) 92.8 (0.85) 68.9 (0.59) 94.9 (0.83) 80.2 (0.70) 47.1 (0.34)
0.06 29.4 (0.20) 42.8 (0.33) 32.4 (0.23) 37.6 (0.25) 35.4 (0.26) 18.7 (0.08)
0.08 17.4 (0.10) 24.1 (0.16) 19.3 (0.12) 20.4 (0.10) 20.0 (0.12) 11.1 (0.04)
0.10 12.2 (0.06) 16.2 (0.09) 13.3 (0.07) 13.8 (0.05) 13.3 (0.07) 7.77 (0.02)
−0.02 185 (1.79) 277 (2.76) 197 (1.91) 181 (1.74) 182 (1.77) 106 (0.99)
−0.04 66.0 (0.56) 126 (1.15) 69.7 (0.61) 67.5 (0.60) 69.4 (0.60) 31.0 (0.24)
−0.06 30.2 (0.21) 53.5 (0.42) 32.3 (0.23) 30.7 (0.23) 32.8 (0.24) 15.0 (0.09)
−0.08 18.1 (0.10) 27.7 (0.17) 19.1 (0.11) 18.0 (0.11) 19.9 (0.12) 9.60 (0.05)
−0.10 12.8 (0.06) 18.2 (0.09) 13.1 (0.07) 12.6 (0.07) 13.9 (0.07) 7.09 (0.03)

NOTE: Standard errors are in parentheses. λ = 0.1. N = 100.

MOC chart still has some superiority and is more
convenient in detecting dependence deviation.
The above simulations take shifts in either loca-
tion or dependence into consideration. Table 7 shows
the comparison results of simultaneously monitoring
location and dependence shifts under the underlying
joint distribution N3 (0, Ω). Here we denote a corre-
lation shift by δ1 and a location shift by δ2 . Table 7
considers different combinations of shifts in the cor-
relation coefficients ρ12 , ρ13 , ρ23 and in the locations
of the latent variables X1∗ , X2∗ , X3∗ . We see that, in
most cases, the MOC chart outperforms the LMBM
chart, which is due to the advantage of the MOC
chart in detecting location shifts. But this advantage
is compromised in the case of shifts in ρ23 , which is
similar to Table 4 that reports OC ARLs of detecting
dependence shifts only.
Apart from the above simulations, we also investi-
gated the selection of the EWMA smoothing parame-
ter λ. Generally, a small λ leads to quicker detection
of small shifts, whereas a large λ allows detecting
large shifts quickly. This is consistent with the con-
clusion in Lucas and Saccucci (1990). The appropri-
ate λ is recommended to be between 0.05 and 0.2.
The simulation results of the effects of different λ on
OC ARLs is available from the authors on request.

TABLE 5. OC ARL Comparison with Dependence Shifts Under t3 (3)

ρ12 ρ13 ρ23

δ MOC LMBM MOC LMBM MOC LMBM

0.02 200 (1.94) 227 (2.24) 195 (1.89) 268 (2.59) 199 (1.98) 195 (1.84)
0.04 70.7 (0.61) 106 (0.98) 70.9 (0.61) 107 (0.93) 67.5 (0.58) 46.0 (0.32)
0.06 31.9 (0.23) 49.1 (0.40) 32.5 (0.23) 42.8 (0.30) 29.8 (0.21) 19.0 (0.08)
0.08 18.8 (0.11) 27.5 (0.19) 19.2 (0.11) 23.0 (0.12) 17.4 (0.10) 11.4 (0.04)
0.10 13.2 (0.07) 18.0 (0.10) 13.2 (0.07) 15.3 (0.06) 11.9 (0.06) 8.02 (0.02)
−0.02 193 (1.86) 284 (2.80) 192 (1.88) 201 (1.96) 179 (1.73) 126 (1.24)
−0.04 69.9 (0.61) 137 (1.28) 68.0 (0.58) 81.0 (0.72) 62.9 (0.54) 38.9 (0.31)
−0.06 32.3 (0.23) 60.5 (0.48) 31.0 (0.22) 37.0 (0.28) 30.0 (0.22) 18.4 (0.12)
−0.08 19.2 (0.11) 31.8 (0.20) 18.5 (0.11) 21.2 (0.13) 18.0 (0.11) 11.6 (0.06)
−0.10 13.3 (0.07) 20.3 (0.10) 13.0 (0.07) 14.6 (0.08) 12.9 (0.07) 8.54 (0.04)

NOTE: Standard errors are in parentheses. λ = 0.1. N = 100.

Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017 www.asq.org

118 JUNJIE WANG, JIAN LI, AND QIN SU

TABLE 6. OC ARL Comparison with Dependence Shifts Under Ga3 (3, 1)

ρ12 ρ13 ρ23

δ MOC LMBM MOC LMBM MOC LMBM

0.02 333 (3.33) 337 (3.33) 190 (1.84) 267 (2.60) 104 (0.95) 137 (1.27)
0.04 259 (2.57) 278 (2.74) 71.3 (0.63) 131 (1.19) 26.5 (0.18) 29.4 (0.18)
0.06 173 (1.66) 210 (2.03) 32.4 (0.23) 58.7 (0.48) 12.6 (0.06) 13.5 (0.05)
0.08 110 (0.99) 147 (1.39) 18.4 (0.11) 29.8 (0.19) 8.09 (0.03) 8.44 (0.03)
0.10 67.8 (0.58) 100 (0.91) 12.4 (0.06) 18.7 (0.10) 5.92 (0.02) 6.10 (0.02)
−0.02 321 (3.18) 339 (3.33) 228 (2.23) 288 (2.83) 88.3 (0.80) 121 (1.13)
−0.04 266 (2.61) 289 (2.84) 95.5 (0.86) 165 (1.57) 26.0 (0.18) 34.2 (0.24)
−0.06 215 (2.10) 228 (2.25) 46.1 (0.36) 88.2 (0.80) 13.9 (0.08) 16.6 (0.09)
−0.08 175 (1.72) 165 (1.56) 27.7 (0.19) 51.3 (0.41) 9.42 (0.04) 11.0 (0.05)
−0.10 146 (1.40) 118 (1.08) 19.5 (0.12) 33.8 (0.23) 7.23 (0.03) 8.29 (0.03)

NOTE: Standard errors are in parentheses. λ = 0.1. N = 100.

Finally, we investigate how large a phase I sample
size m0 is required in order to achieve the nominal
IC ARL 370. Here the simulations are performed via
a similar procedure to that in Zou and Tsung (2011)
and under identical settings to simulating OC ARLs
above. The results are listed in Table 8. It shows that
the actual IC ARLs approach 370 as m0 increases,
which is consistent with the result of Jones et al.
(2001). Therefore, in this case, the phase I sample
size m0 = 100,000 is recommended according to the
rule of the actual IC ARL within ±10% of the nom-
inal IC ARL 370 (Jones et al. (2001)).
5. A Practical Example
In this section, the proposed MOC chart is imple-
mented in a real process of porcelain manufacturing
introduced by Taleb (2009). The process mainly con-
sists of two procedures, transformation and enamel
firing. The former procedure is to transform the pre-
pared material sequentially in the pressing line, cal-
ibration line, and casting line. Next the transformed
units are enameled before being put in the oven
trolleys. After the oven phase, the products are fin-
ished and require quality assessment for further pro-
cedures. The product quality will be evaluated ac-
cording to three characteristics, appearance (X1 ),
translucence (X2 ), and whiteness (X3 ).
Because it is hard and costly to obtain the fac-
tors’ numerical values, the quality is better assessed
by ordinal levels. To be specific, each factor can be
classified into three ordinal levels like perfect, good,
and bad. In this way, there will be 33 = 27 level
combinations, and a contingency table with 27 cells
stores the counts under each combination. The porce-
lain quality is affected by three ordinal factors that
may correlate with each other. It is reasonable to em-
ploy the proposed MOC chart for monitoring them
simultaneously, which is a good tool without loss of
ordinal information among the attribute levels.
Based on the IC dataset comprising 4,600 obser-
vations, the IC probability vector can be estimated
as
p(0) = [0.1829, 0.0574, 0.0246, 0.2358, 0.0143, 0.0050,
0.0107, 0.0033, 0.0015, 0.1072, 0.0272, 0.0159,
0.1360, 0.0048, 0.0037, 0.0070, 0.0022, 0.0004,
0.0524, 0.0165, 0.0074, 0.0722, 0.0035, 0.0015,
0.0050, 0.0007, 0.0009]T .
This IC dataset may not be large enough, but it
suffices to demonstrate the implementation of the
MOC chart. According to the IC cell probabilities,
the marginal and cumulative probabilities of each
factor and the score vectors s(1) , s(2) , s(3) can be cal-
culated. Therefore, the design matrix Y and the co-
variance matrix Λ(0) may also be figured out. Then
we choose the sample size N = 200 and the EWMA
smoothing parameter λ = 0.1. Given the IC ARL
370, the control limit of the MOC chart is set as
0.9547 via binary segmentation. Note that the sam-
ples are collected as count vectors of dimension 27×1,
such as
n1 = [37, 10, 5, 56, 2, 2, 3, 0, 0, 23, 5, 3, 27, 0, 0, 2, 0,
0, 8, 6, 1, 9, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0]T .

Journal of Quality Technology Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017

 MULTIVARIATE ORDINAL CATEGORICAL PROCESS CONTROL BASED ON LOG-LINEAR MODELING 119

TABLE 7. OC ARL Comparison with Location and Dependence Shifts Under N3 (0, Ω)

(ρ12 , X1∗ ) (ρ13 , X1∗ ) (ρ23 , X1∗ )

δ1 δ2 MOC LMBM MOC LMBM MOC LMBM

0.02 0.02 125 (1.18) 174 (1.71) 126 (1.19) 203 (1.97) 144 (1.35) 168 (1.55)
0.02 −0.02 135 (1.28) 185 (1.82) 142 (1.32) 214 (2.08) 157 (1.47) 175 (1.64)
−0.02 0.02 125 (1.16) 215 (2.10) 131 (1.25) 149 (1.42) 123 (1.13) 89.5 (0.83)
−0.02 −0.02 138 (1.29) 228 (2.21) 139 (1.30) 159 (1.54) 134 (1.26) 93.0 (0.86)
0.04 0.04 37.1 (0.28) 57.6 (0.48) 37.9 (0.28) 59.5 (0.46) 41.7 (0.32) 35.7 (0.23)
0.04 −0.04 37.5 (0.28) 61.7 (0.52) 41.2 (0.32) 61.9 (0.48) 44.6 (0.35) 36.8 (0.24)
−0.04 0.04 36.8 (0.27) 71.8 (0.60) 38.5 (0.29) 45.1 (0.36) 38.2 (0.29) 25.2 (0.18)
−0.04 −0.04 39.3 (0.30) 75.9 (0.64) 39.3 (0.30) 48.8 (0.39) 39.6 (0.30) 26.3 (0.19)

(ρ12 , X2∗ ) (ρ13 , X2∗ ) (ρ23 , X2∗ )

δ1 δ2 MOC LMBM MOC LMBM MOC LMBM

0.02 0.02 112 (1.05) 163 (1.56) 113 (1.06) 192 (1.85) 132 (1.24) 161 (1.49)
0.02 −0.02 111 (1.03) 160 (1.55) 114 (1.06) 184 (1.77) 128 (1.20) 155 (1.43)
−0.02 0.02 113 (1.05) 201 (1.95) 118 (1.10) 140 (1.33) 107 (0.99) 86.2 (0.79)
−0.02 −0.02 113 (1.06) 196 (1.89) 114 (1.06) 138 (1.29) 111 (1.04) 84.3 (0.78)
0.04 0.04 31.2 (0.22) 49.8 (0.40) 31.7 (0.23) 51.8 (0.39) 35.2 (0.26) 33.1 (0.20)
0.04 −0.04 30.2 (0.21) 47.9 (0.37) 33.3 (0.24) 49.2 (0.37) 35.3 (0.26) 32.0 (0.19)
−0.04 0.04 31.2 (0.22) 60.4 (0.49) 33.1 (0.24) 40.3 (0.31) 30.9 (0.22) 23.5 (0.16)
−0.04 −0.04 31.8 (0.23) 58.3 (0.48) 31.6 (0.23) 40.6 (0.31) 32.0 (0.23) 23.4 (0.16)

(ρ12 , X3∗ ) (ρ13 , X3∗ ) (ρ23 , X3∗ )

δ1 δ2 MOC LMBM MOC LMBM MOC LMBM

0.02 0.02 102 (0.95) 153 (1.49) 110 (1.03) 172 (1.66) 125 (1.18) 147 (1.35)
0.02 −0.02 105 (0.95) 156 (1.50) 104 (0.96) 180 (1.74) 117 (1.08) 154 (1.44)
−0.02 0.02 108 (1.00) 185 (1.81) 105 (0.97) 132 (1.27) 102 (0.93) 82.0 (0.75)
−0.02 −0.02 103 (0.95) 191 (1.83) 108 (1.01) 133 (1.25) 102 (0.92) 81.6 (0.75)
0.04 0.04 27.5 (0.19) 44.5 (0.34) 31.1 (0.22) 45.6 (0.33) 33.2 (0.24) 30.5 (0.18)
0.04 −0.04 28.8 (0.20) 45.3 (0.36) 28.8 (0.20) 47.1 (0.35) 31.2 (0.22) 31.3 (0.19)
−0.04 0.04 30.3 (0.21) 53.1 (0.42) 28.6 (0.20) 37.5 (0.28) 28.7 (0.20) 22.5 (0.15)
−0.04 −0.04 28.3 (0.19) 53.6 (0.42) 30.1 (0.21) 37.2 (0.28) 28.8 (0.20) 22.2 (0.15)

NOTE: Standard errors are in parentheses. λ = 0.1. N = 100.

In phase II, values of the charting statistic are cal-
culated and plotted successively. Figure 1 indicates
the MOC chart releases an OC signal at the 27th
sample.
6. Conclusion
This article proposes a multivariate ordinal cat-
egorical control chart for monitoring multiple ordi-
nal factors simultaneously. In particular, the MOC
chart can detect powerfully location shifts and de-
pendence shifts in the joint distribution of the la-
tent continuous variables that determine the ordi-
nal levels of the factors. For constructing the MOC
chart, we first modified the ordinary log-linear model
into the extended version for incorporating the ordi-
nal information. Compared with the LMBM chart
that is devised for general multivariate categorical
processes, the MOC chart demonstrates more pow-

Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017 www.asq.org

120 JUNJIE WANG, JIAN LI, AND QIN SU

TABLE 8. IC ARLs with Various Phase I Sample Sizes m0 ments that have resulted in significant improve-
ments in this article. Mr. Wang’s work was sup-
m0 N3 (0, Ω) t3 (3) Ga3 (3, 1) ported by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China Grants 71371163, 71502135, and 71371151.
10,000 103 (0.90) 120 (1.07) 236 (2.25) Dr. Li’s research was supported by the National Nat-
20,000 233 (2.27) 132 (1.20) 267 (2.52) ural Science Foundation of China Grants 71402133,
50,000 297 (2.88) 251 (2.41) 281 (2.65) 71572138, and 11501209, and the Open Fund of State
100,000 352 (3.39) 323 (3.16) 334 (3.19) Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engi-
200,000 362 (3.50) 349 (3.40) 360 (3.50) neering (Xi’an Jiaotong University) sklms2016010.
Prof. Su’s work was supported by Humanity and So-
NOTE: Standard errors are in parentheses.
cial Science Research Planning Foundation of Chi-
nese Ministry of Education (No. 13YJA630078) and
Major Program of the National Social Science Foun-
erful performance in detecting shifts either in loca- dation of China (No. 15ZDB150).
tions or in dependence in the latent joint distribution
because it successfully exploits the ordinal informa- Appendix
tion. Furthermore, given the IC cell probability vec-
tor, the MOC chart is easy to construct and simple A. Proof of the Equivalence of Equation (1)
to implement into practice. In fact, the MOC chart and the −2LRT Statistic for Model (2)
is a general tool for monitoring multivariate ordinal
categorical processes, where all the factors are ordi- Model (2) involves only a single factor Xi , which
nal categorical. Future work may consider statistical is
surveillance for categorical processes involving both ln p(i)k = β0 + βi s(i)k (k = 1, . . . , hi ).
nominal and ordinal factors. It can be rewritten as

Acknowledgment ln p(i) = 1β0 + yi βi ,

The authors would like to thank the editor and where p(i) = [p(i)1 , . . . , p(i)hi ]T with 1T p(i) = 1 and
two anonymous referees for their many helpful com- yi = s(i) = [s(i)1 , . . . , s(i)hi ]T . We intend to test the

FIGURE 1. An MOC Chart for Monitoring Porcelain Manufacturing Process.

Journal of Quality Technology Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017

 MULTIVARIATE ORDINAL CATEGORICAL PROCESS CONTROL BASED ON LOG-LINEAR MODELING 121

hypothesis According to the first-order Taylor expansion of t(βi )

(0)
(0) (0) at βi = βi , we get
H0 : βi = βi versus H1 : βi
= βi ,
t(βi ) ≈ t(βi ) + t (βi )(βi − βi ).
(0) (0) (0)
(0)
where βi is the value of βi in the null hypothesis
or the IC state in the SPC context. Due to the con- Let t(βi ) = 0, we obtain the MLE β̂i of βi , which is
straint 1T p(i) = 1, the intercept β0 also has its IC
1  (0) 
β̂i = βi + (yiT Λ(i) yi )−1 yiT n(i) −N p(i) , (A.1)
(0) (0) (0)
value β0 . For a general βi , compared with the IC
N
version, model (2) can be rewritten as
(0) (0) (0)  (0) T
(0) where Λ(i) = diag(p(i) ) − p(i) p(i) . The −2LRT
ln p(i) = 1(β0 + δ) + yi βi subject to 1T p(i) = 1,
statistic will be
(0)
where δ is the deviation of β0 from its IC value β0 (0)
Q(β̂i ) = 2[l(β̂i ) − l(βi )]
(0)
induced by the deviation of βi from its IC value βi . (0)
In addition, δ can be derived from the above equa- (i) (1δ + yi β̂i − yi βi )
= 2nT
(0)
(i) yi (β̂i − βi )
= 2nT
tions as
(0)
δ = − ln[1T exp(1β0 + yi βi )]. (0)
− 2N ln[1T exp(1β0 + yi β̂i )]. (A.2)
T
Let n(i) = [n(i)1 , . . . , n(i)hi ] be the collected cell By the second-order Taylor expansion of Q(β̂i ) at
counts in a sample of size N , which jointly follow the (0)
β̂i = βi , we have
multinomial distribution MN(N ; p(i)1 , . . . , p(i)hi ).
Q(β̂i ) ≈ Q(βi ) + (β̂i − βi )Q (βi )
The log-likelihood function of δ can be written from (0) (0) (0)

the probability mass function of the multinomial dis- 1

+ (β̂i − βi )2 Q (βi ).
(0) (0)
tribution, which is (A.3)
2

hi 
hi
Similar to the formulations of t(βi ) and t (βi ), the
l(βi ) = n(i)k ln p(i)k + ln(N !) − ln(n(i)k !)
first-order and second-order derivatives of Q(β̂i ) with
k=1 k=1
respect to β̂i can be obtained based on Euation (A.2).
= nT(i) ln p(i) + ln(N !) − 1T ln(n(i) !) (0)
To make it further, set β̂i = βi and we can get the
(0)
= nT(i) (1β0 + 1δ + yi βi ) + ln(N !) following results:
− 1T ln(n(i) !) (0)
Q(βi ) = 0,
(0)
= nT
(i) (1β0 + yi βi Q (βi ) = 2yiT (n(i) − N p(i) ),
(0) (0)

(0)
− 1 ln[1T exp(1β0 + yi βi )]) Q (βi ) = −2N yiT Λ(i) yi .
(0) (0)

+ ln(N !) − 1T ln(n(i) !).

Integrating these results together with Equations
The first-order derivative of l(βi ) with respect to βi (A.1) and (A.3), we can obtain
is
1
(n(i) − N p(i) )T yi (yiT Λ(i) yi )−1 yiT
(0) (0)
dl(βi ) Q(β̂i ) =
t(βi ) = N
dβi (0)
× (n(i) − N p(i) ). (A.4)
= yiT n(i)
(0)
(0)
− N yiT exp[1β0 + yi βi It is easy to find that U = N yiT Λ(i) yi is a constant
(0)
(0)
− 1 ln(1T exp(1β0 + yi βi ))]. and (n(i) − N p(i) )T yi is a scalar. The test statistic
(A.4) will be
Let
T (0)
(i) yi − N p(i) yi ]
[nT 2
(0) (0)
k(βi ) = exp[1β0 +yi βi −1 ln(1T exp(1β0 +yi βi ))], Q(β̂i ) = .
U
then the second-order derivative of l(βi ) with respect hi
to βi will be Due to k=1 p(i)k = 1, it can be further found that
N pT (0) yi = 0. Then the statistic can be simplified
d2 l(βi )
t (βi ) = as
dβi2 [nT 2
(i) yi ] W2
= −N yiT diag(k(βi ))yi + N yiT k(βi )kT (βi )yi . Q(β̂i ) = = i ,
U U

Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2017 www.asq.org

122 JUNJIE WANG, JIAN LI, AND QIN SU

hi
where Wi = | k=1 (c(i)k + c(i)(k−1) − 1)n(i)k | is the
charting statistic in Equation (1).
B. Derivation of the Test Statistic (7)
According to the context, model (6) characterizes
multiple ordinal factors, which is
ln p = 1β0 + Yβ subject to 1T p = 1.
This model has a similar form to model (2). However,
d 43, pp. 156–167.
p is of dimension h × 1 with h = i=1 hi . We intend
to test the hypothesis
H0 : β = β (0) versus H1 : β
= β (0) , Li, J.; Tsung, F.; and Zou, C. (2014a). “Multivariate Bino-
where β (0) is the null version of the coefficient vector
β . Due to the constraint 1T p = 1, let δ be the devi-
(0)
ation of β0 from its IC value β0 , which is induced
by the deviation of β from β (0) . Then model (6) can
be modified as
(0)
ln p = 1(β0 + δ) + Yβ subject to 1T p = 1.
(B.1)
Based on the cell-count vector nk at sampling point
k, the log-likelihood function of β is written as
(0)
k (1β0 + 1δ + Y β ) + ln(N !) − 1 (ln nk !).
l(β ) = nT T Weighted Moving Average Control Schemes: Properties and
(B.2)
Based on (B.1) and (B.2), the −2LRT statistic of
Equation (7) can be formulated in a similar way to
that in Appendix A, which is finalized as
1
Qk = (nk − N p(0) )T Y(YT Λ(0) Y)−1 YT
N Taleb, H. (2009). “Control Charts Applications for Multi-
× (nk − N p(0) ).
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