Statistical process control of multivariate processes

With process computers routinely collecting measurements on large numbers of process variables, multivariate statistical methods for the analysis, monitoring and diagnosis of process operating performance have received increasing attention. Extensions of traditional univariate Shewhart, CUSUM and EWMA control charts to multivariate quality control situations are based on Hotelling's T2 statistic. Recent approaches to multivariate statistical process control which utilize not only product quality data (Y), but also all of the available process variable data (X) are based on multivariate statistical projection methods (Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Squares (PLS)). This paper gives an overview of these methods, and their use for the statistical process control of both continuous and batch multivariate processes. Examples are provided of their use for analysing the operations of a mineral processing plant, for on-line monitoring and fault diagnosis of a continuous polymerization process and for the on-line monitoring of an industrial batch polymerization reactor.