In These multiples of the standard deviation, enter one or more values to display additional standard deviation lines on your control chart.
You can specify a lower bound and an upper bound for the control limits. If the calculated control limit is farther from the center line than the value that you specify, Minitab displays the bound instead of the control limit. Minitab labels the lower bound as LB and the upper bound as UB.
Upper bounds and lower bounds do not affect the calculations for any of the tests for special causes.
When you specify a subgroup size, you change the calculations for the control limits, which can change the results of the tests for special causes. Use this option only if the differences between the subgroup sizes are small. Don't use this option when the difference between subgroup sizes is more than 25%. For example, if the largest subgroup has 10 observations and the smallest subgroup has 8 observations, then the difference is 20% ((10 – 8) / 10 = 0.2 = 20%).
For example, the data for the following charts is the same, but the control limits for the second chart were calculated based on a fixed subgroup size.