Overview of the Process Capability Platform
The Process Capability platform provides the tools needed to measure the compliance of a process to given specifications. By default, JMP shows a Goal Plot, Capability Box Plots, and a Capability Index Plot for the variables that you fit with normal distributions. Capability indices for nonnormal variables are plotted on the Capability Index Plot. You can add normalized box plots, summary reports, and individual detail reports for the variables in your analysis.
You can supply specification limits in several ways:
• in the data table, using a column property
• by requesting the Spec Limits Dialog in the launch window
• by loading the limits from a specification limits data table
• using the Manage Spec Limits utility (Analyze > Quality and Process > Manage Spec Limits)
You can specify two-sided, one-sided, or asymmetric specification limits.
Note: The Process Capability platform expands significantly on the Capability analyses that are available through Analyze > Distribution and through Analyze > Quality and Process > Control Chart.
Capability Indices
A capability index is a ratio that relates the ability of a process to produce product that meets specification limits. The index relates estimates of the mean and standard deviation of the quality characteristic to the specification limits. Within estimates of capability are based on an estimate of the standard deviation constructed from within-subgroup variation. Overall estimates of capability use an estimate of standard deviation constructed from all of the process data. See Capability Indices for Normal Distributions and Variation Statistics.
Estimates of the mean or standard deviation are well-defined only if the processes related to centering or spread are stable. Therefore, interpretation of within capability indices requires that process spread is stable. Interpretation of overall capability indices requires that both process centering and spread are stable.
Capability indices constructed from small samples can be highly variable. The Process Capability platform provides confidence intervals for most capability indices. Use these to determine the range of potential values for your quality characteristic’s actual capability.
Note: 
When confidence intervals are not provided (for example, for nonnormal distributions) you can use the Simulate feature to construct confidence intervals. For an example, see Simulation of Confidence Limits for a Nonnormal Process Ppk.
Guidelines for values of capability indices can be found in Montgomery (2013). The minimum recommended value is 1.33. Six Sigma initiatives aim for much higher capability levels that correspond to extremely low rates of defective parts per million.
Capability Indices for Nonnormal Processes
The Process Capability platform constructs capability indices for process measurements with the following distributions: Normal, Beta, Exponential, Gamma, Johnson, Lognormal, Mixture of 2 Normals, Mixture of 3 Normals, SHASH, and Weibull. A Best Fit option determines the best fit among these distributions and provides capability indices for this fit. The platform also provides a Nonparametric fit option that gives nonparametric estimates of capability.
For the nonnormal methods, estimates are constructed using two approaches: the ISO/Quantile method (Percentiles) and the Bothe/Z-scores method (Z-Score). For more information about these methods, see Capability Indices for Nonnormal Distributions: Percentile and Z-Score Methods.
Note: Process Capability analysis for individual responses is accessible through Analyze > Quality and Process > Control Chart Builder. However, nonnormal distributions are available only in the Process Capability platform.
Overall and Within Estimates of Sigma
Most capability indices in the Process Capability platform can be computed based on estimates of the overall (long-term) variation and the within-subgroup (short-term) variation. If the process is stable, these two measures of variation should yield similar results since the overall and within subgroup variation should be similar. The normalized box plots and summary tables can be calculated using either the overall or the within-subgroup variation. See Additional Examples of the Process Capability Platform for examples of capability indices computed for stable and unstable processes.
You can specify subgroups for estimating within-subgroup variation in the launch window. You can specify a column that defines subgroups or you can select a constant subgroup size. For each of these methods, you can choose to estimate the process variation using the average of the unbiased standard deviations or using the average of the ranges. If you do not specify subgroups, the Process Capability platform constructs a within-subgroup estimate of the process variation using a moving range of subgroups of size two. Finally, you can specify a historical sigma to be used as an estimate of the process standard deviation.
Capability Index Notation
The Process Capability platform provides two sets of capability indices. See Capability Indices for Normal Distributions for more information about the calculation of the capability indices.
• Cpk, Cpl, Cpu, Cp, and Cpm. These indices are based on a within-subgroup (short-term) estimate of the process standard deviation.
• Ppk, Ppl, Ppu, Pp, and Cpm. These indices are based on an overall (long-term) estimate of the process standard deviation. Note that the process standard deviation does not exist if the process is not stable. See Montgomery (2013).
The Process Capability platform uses the appropriate AIAG notation for capability indices: Ppk labeling denotes an index constructed from an overall variation estimate and Cpk denotes an index constructed from a within-subgroup variation estimate.
Note: The AIAG (Ppk) Labeling platform preference is selected by default. You can change the reporting to use Cp notation only by deselecting this preference under Process Capability.
For more information about process capability analysis, see Montgomery (2013) and Wheeler (2004).