Training for design of experiments using a catapult

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Abstract
Design of experiments (DOE) is a powerful approach for discovering a set of process (or design) variables which are most important to the process and then determine at what levels these variables must be kept to optimize the response (or quality characteristic) of interest. This paper presents two catapult experiments which can be easily taught to engineers and managers in organizations to train for design of experiments. The results of this experiment have been taken from a real live catapult experiment performed by a group of engineers in a company during the training program on DOE. The first experiment was conducted to separate out the key factors (or variables) from the trivial and the second experiment was carried out using the key factors to understand the nature of interactions among the key factors. The results of the experiment were analysed using simple but powerful graphical tools for rapid and easier understanding of the results to engineers with limited statistical competency. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.