ABSTRACT
Quality improvement using statistical planning and design of experiments is a major concern for many organizations today. Design of experiments (sometimes referred to as experimental design) is a powerful approach to product and process design and development, and for improving the yield and stability of an on-going production process (Montgomery, 1992). It is a direct replacement of One-Factor-At-A-Time (OFAAT) approach to experimentation, which is often unreliable, unpredictable and may yield false optimum conditions for the process (Logothetis, 1994). Experimental design, in contrast, is a systematic and structured approach to experimentation, whereby we study the effect of all the factors on a certain response (or quality characteristic) simultaneously. Here response or quality characteristic is the output which is of interest to experimenters and will have a significant impact on customer satisfaction.
