Stop Guessing and Start Knowing: Using Design of Experiments Methods in a Manufacturing Environment

For engineers working in the manufacturing industry, some processes were so complex that even a very experienced and competent engineer will not necessarily know how to identify the best settings for the manufacturing equipment. 

When this happens, they could make a guess using a general idea of what should be done regarding the optimal settings, but that was not sufficient or advisable. Manufacturing engineers need very precise indications of the correct process parameters, considering the specificities of the manufacturing equipment.

Or they could guess the best settings, assess the results, and then try to further improve the settings by modifying one factor at a time. But this could be a lengthy process, and they still might not find the optimal settings.

Even if a manufacturing environment has the optimal settings for current conditions, to ensure that the plant remains at the leading edge, new technologies will need to be adopted -- introducing unknown situations and new problems. Ultimately, engineers need a comprehensive model that helps them understand, very precisely, how the system works, and they obviously cannot accomplish that by adjusting one factor at a time and experimenting in a disorganized way.