Performance comparisons of distribution-free Shewhart-type Lepage and Cucconi schemes in monitoring complex process distributions

In recent years, researchers introduced several distribution-free schemes for simultaneously monitoring the location and scale parameters of distribution in the literature related to process monitoring and control. To this end, the Shewhart-Lepage (SL) and Shewhart-Cucconi (SC) schemes are two fundamental distribution-free schemes. These schemes are primarily designed to monitor the location-scale family of densities. In practice, apart from the location and scale parameters, we often encounter the presence of a shape (or skewness) parameter. In this article, we investigate the performance of the SL and SC schemes in monitoring such models. We consider some skewed distributions in the location-scale family with one or two additional parameters, some three-parameter time-to-event processes, such as three-parameter Weibull and Gamma, which are very common in various measurement and control literature. First, we present the in-control performance of the two competing schemes and then carry out a comprehensive out-of-control performance study by considering different combinations of shifts. Several recent investigations showed that the SC scheme performs just as well or better than the SL scheme in joint monitoring of the location and scale parameters for a large number of process distributions. The current study shows that in the presence of an additional parameter, especially when the shift in the shape parameter is substantial, the SL scheme is better; for a small change in shape, the SC scheme is more competitive. In general, the SL scheme performs better in monitoring the three-parameter distributions for time-to-event processes. Finally, a real application and some concluding remarks are presented.