ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the setup and analysis of a main effects experiment. This type of experiment is extremely important, since it is often the first experiment conducted on a new process or design. It illustrates the possible ways that arrays can be manipulated. Many other manipulations are available; in fact, it is possible to do almost anything that the degrees of freedom allow to customize an array to fit a particular experimental need. The useful manipulation is the nested factor, in which the relationship between two factors is evaluated as a factor by itself. Both combination designs and nested factors are beyond the capability of most of the software currently available, so these techniques require manual analysis. The chapter considers relevant interactions among factors when designing an experiment since, like main effects, interaction will show up in the effects, whether they are accounted for in the array or not.