Careful planning can help you avoid problems that can occur during the
execution of the experimental plan. For example, personnel, equipment
availability, funding, and the mechanical aspects of your system may affect
your ability to complete the experiment. If your project has low priority,
you may want to carry out small sequential experiments. That way, if you
lose resources to a higher priority project, you will not have to discard
the data you have already collected. When resources become available again,
you can resume experimentation.
The preparation required before beginning experimentation depends on
your problem. Here are some steps you may need to go through:
· Define the problem. Developing a good
problem statement helps make sure you are studying the right variables.
At this step, you identify the questions that you want to answer.
· Define the objective. A well-defined
objective will ensure that the experiment answers the right questions
and yields practical, usable information. At this step, you define the
goals of the experiment.
· Develop an experimental plan that will provide
meaningful information. Be sure to review relevant background information,
such as theoretical principles, and knowledge gained through observation
or previous experimentation. For example, you may need to identify which
factors or process conditions affect process performance and contribute
to process variability. Or, if the process is already established and
the influential factors have been identified, you may want to determine
optimal process conditions.
· Make sure the process and measurement systems
are in control. Ideally, both the process and the measurements
should be in statistical control as measured by a functioning statistical process control (SPC)
system. Even if you do not have the process completely in control, you
must be able to reproduce process settings. You also need to determine
the variability in the measurement system. If the variability in your
system is greater than the difference/effect that you consider important,
experimentation will not yield useful results.
Minitab provides numerous tools to evaluate process control
and analyze your measurement system.
Planning