Design of Experiments

Abstract

Design of Experiments (DOE) is an approach used to model systems or processes. The goals of the DOE approach are to conduct the upfront analyses to determine what responses are important to system or process improvement, predict factors that may affect those responses, and model the relationships between the factors and the responses and between the factors and the variability of the responses. DOE is used in systems engineering to design correct solutions to customer needs, in test and evaluation to determine system effectiveness, in generating efficient models for inclusion in simulations, and in conducting sensitivity analyses of physical or simulated systems. Practitioners in research, engineering, requirements definition, systems design, quality improvement, and evaluation increasingly use DOE across industries such as agriculture, biology, pharmacology, automobile production, aircraft manufacturing, electronics, and customer service. This chapter will give an introduction to DOE, and then give several examples of Simple Full-Factorial Designs.