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Multiple Choice

Levy-Jennings charts and moving average QC help detect trends in automation data. How do they differ?

Levy-Jennings charts are built to monitor QC values against a fixed target mean with sigma-based limits, so each result is judged against an established performance envelope. This makes shifts in the process or a sustained bias stand out as out-of-control points or nonrandom patterns, providing explicit decision rules about whether results are within acceptable variation. Moving average QC, by contrast, averages a sliding window of consecutive results, smoothing out random fluctuations to reveal gradual trends or drifts that may be too subtle to notice in individual values. It doesn’t by itself impose fixed limits on the smoothed line unless you add those limits separately, so its strength is trend visualization rather than formal boundary-based alerts.

Levy-Jennings charts are built to monitor QC values against a fixed target mean with sigma-based limits, so each result is judged against an established performance envelope. This makes shifts in the process or a sustained bias stand out as out-of-control points or nonrandom patterns, providing explicit decision rules about whether results are within acceptable variation.

Moving average QC, by contrast, averages a sliding window of consecutive results, smoothing out random fluctuations to reveal gradual trends or drifts that may be too subtle to notice in individual values. It doesn’t by itself impose fixed limits on the smoothed line unless you add those limits separately, so its strength is trend visualization rather than formal boundary-based alerts.