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Design of Experiments Overview

Design of Experiments (DOE) Overview, 18-2 Modifying and Using Worksheet Data, 18-4 See also,
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Design of Experiments (DOE) Overview

In industry, designed experiments can be used to systematically investigate the process or product variables that influence product quality. After you identify the process conditions and product components that influence product quality, you can direct improvement efforts to enhance a products manufacturability, reliability, quality, and field performance. For example, you may want to investigate the influence of coating type and furnace temperature on the corrosion resistance of steel bars. You could design an experiment that allows you to collect data at combinations of coatings/temperature, measure corrosion resistance, and then use the findings to adjust manufacturing conditions. Because resources are limited, it is very important to get the most information from each experiment you perform. Well-designed experiments can produce significantly more information and often require fewer runs than haphazard or unplanned experiments. In addition, a well-designed experiment will ensure that you can evaluate the effects that you have identified as important. For example, if you believe that there is an interaction between two input variables, be sure to include both variables in your design rather than doing a one factor at a time experiment. An interaction occurs when the effect of one input variable is influenced by the level of another input variable. Designed experiments are often carried out in four phases: planning, screening (also called process characterization), optimization, and verification.

Planning
Careful planning can help you avoid problems that can occur during the execution of the experimental plan. For example, personnel, equipment availability, funding, and the mechanical aspects of your system may affect your ability to complete the experiment. If your project has low priority, you may want to carry out small sequential experiments. That way, if you lose resources to a higher priority project, you will not have to discard the data you have already collected. When resources become available again, you can resume experimentation. The preparation required before beginning experimentation depends on your problem. Here are some steps you may need to go through:
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Define the problem. Developing a good problem statement helps make sure you are studying the right variables. At this step, you identify the questions that you want to answer. Define the objective. A well-defined objective will ensure that the experiment answers the right questions and yields practical, usable information. At this step, you define the goals of the experiment. Develop an experimental plan that will provide meaningful information. Be sure to review relevant background information, such as theoretical principles, and
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Design of Experiments Overview

knowledge gained through observation or previous experimentation. For example, you may need to identify which factors or process conditions affect process performance and contribute to process variability. Or, if the process is already established and the influential factors have been identified, you may want determine optimal process conditions.
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Make sure the process and measurement systems are in control. Ideally, both the process and the measurements should be in statistical control as measured by a functioning statistical process control (SPC) system. Even if you do not have the process completely in control, you must be able to reproduce process settings. You also need to determine the variability in the measurement system. If the variability in your system is greater than the difference/effect that you consider important, experimentation will not yield useful results. MINITAB provides numerous tools to evaluate process control and analyze your measurement system. See Part II Quality Control in this book.

Screening
In many process development and manufacturing applications, potentially influential variables are numerous. Screening reduces the number of variables by identifying the key variables that affect product quality. This reduction allows you to focus process improvement efforts on the really important variables, or the vital few. Screening may also suggest the best or optimal settings for these factors, and indicate whether or not curvature exists in the responses. Then, you can use optimization methods to determine the best settings and define the nature of the curvature. Chapter 19, Factorial Designs, describes methods that are often used for screening:
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two-level full and fractional factorial designs are used extensively in industry Plackett-Burman designs have low resolution, but their usefulness in some screening experimentation and robustness testing is widely recognized general full factorial designs (designs with more than two-levels) may also be useful for small screening experiments

Optimization
After you have identified the vital few by screening, you need to determine the best or optimal values for these experimental factors. Optimal factor values depend on the process objective. For example, you may want to maximize process yield or reduce product variability. The optimization methods available in MINITAB include general full factorial designs (designs with more than two-levels), response surface designs, mixture designs, and Taguchi designs.
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Chapter 19, Factorial Designs, describes methods for designing and analyzing general full factorial designs. Chapter 20, Response Surface Designs, describes methods for designing and analyzing central composite and Box-Behnken designs. Chapter 21, Mixture Designs, describes methods for designing and analyzing simplex centroid, simplex lattice, and extreme vertices designs. Mixture designs are special class of response surface designs where the proportions of the components (factors), rather than their magnitude, are important. Chapter 23, Response Optimization, describes methods for optimizing multiple responses. MINITAB provides numerical optimization, an interactive graph, and an overlaid contour plot to help you determine the best settings to simultaneously optimize multiple responses. Chapter 24, Taguchi Designs, describes methods for analyzing Taguchi designs. Taguchi designs may also be called orthogonal array designs, robust designs, or inner-outer array designs. These designs are used for creating products that are robust to conditions in their expected operating environment.

Verification
Verification involves performing a follow-up experiment at the predicted best processing conditions to confirm the optimization results. For example, you may perform a few verification runs at the optimal settings, then obtain a confidence interval for the mean response. More
Our intent is to provide only a brief introduction to the design of experiments. There are many resources that provide a thorough treatment of these methods. For a list of resources, see References on pages 19-65, 20-38, 21-54, and 24-39.

Modifying and Using Worksheet Data

When you create a design using one of the Create Design procedures, MINITAB creates a design object that stores the appropriate design information in the worksheet. MINITAB needs this stored information to analyze and plot data properly. The following columns contain your design:
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StdOrder RunOrder CenterPt (two-level factorial and Plackett-Burman designs only) PtType (mixture designs only)
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Blocks factor or component columns

If you want to analyze your design with the Analyze Design procedures, you must follow certain rules when modifying worksheet data. If you make changes that corrupt your design, you may still be able to analyze it with the Analyze Design procedures after you use one of the Define Custom Design procedures.
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You cannot delete or move the columns that contain the design. You can enter, edit, and analyze data in all the other columns of the worksheet, that is, all columns beyond the last design column. You can place the response and covariate data here, or any other data you want to enter into the worksheet. You can delete runs from your design. If you delete runs, you may not be able to fit all terms in your model. In that case, MINITAB will automatically remove any terms that cannot be fit and do the analysis using the remaining terms. You can add runs to your design. For example, you may want to add center points or a replicate of a particular run of interest. Make sure the levels are appropriate for each factor or component and that you enter appropriate values in StdOrder, RunOrder, CenterPt, PtType and Blocks. These columns and the factor or component columns must all be the same length. You can use any numbers that seem reasonable for StdOrder and RunOrder. MINITAB uses these two columns to order data in the worksheet. You can change the level of a factor for a botched run in the Data windowsee Analyzing designs with botched runs on page 19-44. You can change factor level settings using Modify Design. However, you cannot change a factor type from numeric to text or text to numeric. You can change the name of factors and components using Modify Design. You can use any procedures to analyze the data in your design, not just the procedures in the DOE menu. You can add factors to your design by entering them in the worksheet. Then, use one of the Define Custom Design procedures.
If you make changes that corrupt your design, you may still be able to analyze it. You can redefine the design using one of the Define Custom Design procedures.

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