An Overview of Empirical Process Optimization

Every engineering system or process is designed with an intended purpose. The purpose frequently entails a desired performance of the operation of the product being manufactured or of the process that manufactures it². Inmany cases, engineering design activities involve tests or experimentation, since the product or process is not well understood, and the desired performance can not be guaranteed. Classical examples abound in Chemical Engineering, in which results from a pilot plant experiment are scaled up to the manufacturing site. In traditional discrete part manufacturing, e.g., machining processes, experimental design and analysis has been used to improve the performance of processes given the inherent noise in the various responses of interest. In designing new products, research & development groups run experiments, build models, and try to optimize responses related to the performance of the new product being designed. In this chapter, we provide an overview of these methods and introduce some basic terminology that will be used in later chapters.