Mixture Design Overview
overview     see also 

Mixture experiments are a special class of response surface experiments in which the product under investigation is made up of several components or ingredients. Designs for these experiments are useful because many product design and development activities in industrial situations involve formulations or mixtures. In these situations, the response is a function of the proportions of the different ingredients in the mixture. For example, you may be developing a pancake mix that is made of flour, baking powder, milk, eggs, and oil. Or, you may be developing an insecticide that blends four chemical ingredients.

In the simplest mixture experiment, the response (the quality or performance of the product based on some criterion) depends on the relative proportions of the components (ingredients). The quantities of components, measured in weights, volumes, or some other units, add up to a common total. In contrast, in a factorial design, the response varies depending on the amount of each factor (input variable).

Minitab can create designs and analyze data from three types of experiments:

·    mixture experiments

·    mixture-amounts (MA) experiments

·    mixture-process variable (MPV) experiments

The difference in these experiments is summarized below: