How does DOE tie into the Decision Making Process - Assignment Example

How Does DOE Tie into the Decision-Making Process? Affiliation Assignment 11 How does DOE tie into the Decision – Making Process? Introduction What is decision making? What does it entail? How is it associated with the design of experiments? These are fundamental questions that each and every student who is concerned with what has been learnt while solving the assignments that have been given for this course will probably ask him or herself. To begin with, decision making is a fundamental issue that affects each and every one of us in our daily lives. A decision is composed of a selection among various approaches that can be utilized to solve an issue. Each decision has its own consequences. Some are positive while others are negative. Hence, it is important that clear decisions are made. But clear decisions cannot just be made literally. Clear decision making is done with the help of various means. In this case, the design of experiments as learnt in this course is one means through which clear decision making can be done. It avails the evidence, the observations, the conclusions and the factual evidence that is needed in decision making. This paper looks at how the design of experiments is involved in decision making in industrial settings, how it is involved in decision making for the purposes related to quality management and why, how, when it is done and its association with cost benefit analysis. From an industry perspective, it is evident that the competition amongst industries is stiff at all levels of competition. This coupled with the fast changing technological techniques for use in industries adds the pressure on industries to make decisions that are certain, based on evidence and facts. As learnt in this unit, the design of experiments is a vital decision making tool for evidences. As per the research conducted when undertaking the assignments, it was evident that one of the aims of industries is to locate the best possible production level. This was by taking all the factors involved in the production process into account and designing an experiment that would help the industry’s management to make the right decision on which factors to make use of. The DOE enables industries to come up with an appropriate model for production by utilizing the data of the factors obtained. This is part of the decision making process of industries. It was learnt that industries design experiments that include one to several factors that they think will have an effect on a response variable to evaluate if the said factors truly have an effect on the response variable. In industries, the decision making process involved the carrying out of experiments in a real life scenario with the set number of factors that were positioned at a certain figure of levels in relation to how sensitive the data was. The various experiments that were conducted in the assignments showed that industries use DOE to research and evaluate the various systems, processes, materials, employees and the parameters set on how they can best be used to produce the best of the product. This helps industries in deciding what is best for the production of certain products. From what has been done so far, it can be inferred that experimenting is the strength of DOE as it avails knowledge on the processes and products in an industry. By availing this knowledge, then decisions are made based on them. DOE provides a mechanism for coming up with an experimentation plan which capitalizes on studying the design process to be used in the industry utilizing minimum capital. Of what help is this? This is very important when it comes to cost benefit analysis. One of the major decisions that have to be made in an industry is the cost of the design of the design process. How much capital is needed? How much capital shall be used? If this amount of capital is used, shall the design process that will be used to manufacture a product deliver back in terms of profitability? So, DOE is an important tool that helps industries make financial decisions that will benefit the particular industry by use of experiments. Another important feature that was learnt from the assignments is that DOE is used in making decisions that help in maximizing the yield of a manufacturing process in an industry. This is evident in assignment 10 that involved Taguchi designs. This type of designs gives an example of how various types of DOEs can be used in examining which type of design will provide the biggest yield in a manufacturing process. The assignments proved that the experiments done are utilized to identify the design parameters which do not influence the performance features of a process, the manner in which the design parameters can be set in order to decrease the cost while ensuring that the quality is sustained or improved and the parameters of the design that are influential on the performance of the system. Why is DOE done? In the current world, progress has been made in the technological area. The industrial arena has not been left behind as is evident from the experiments done in the assignments. Various designs have come up, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. As I went through various DOEs, it was evident that criticisms have been made to some of them like Taguchi Designs. However, to answer the question why DOEs are used, one important aspect is considered, cost benefit analysis. DOE helps in determining the cost benefit analysis. This is shown in the first assignment whereby screening designs were used. Anthony (2003), states that screening designs require smaller amount of experimental runs which means that the cost is less. Hence they are less expensive. Screening designs only need a quarter of the resource budget for a first screening design. This offers a cost benefit analysis to the industry, say a car manufacturing company. At the same time, industries are affected by limits. These limits are as a result of say the accessibility of resources. As a result, persons that are involved in managing an industry have to evaluate the most cost efficient design to undertake an experiment, while at the same time, that the DOE to be used shall provide the most amount of information on the processes which will help in the decision making of the industry regarding their products. This is usually before a decision is made to use DOE. The assignments that have been undertaken all through have shown that DOE avails very strong techniques that are efficient. DOE is very useful in the area of quality management. Important decisions have to be made in order to meet certain levels of quality. It is here that DOE comes into play. After completion of DOE analysis, data is obtained that is used in quality management decision making. DOE provides techniques that are important in determining constant problems associated with quality during production of the product. These constant problems lead to the production of a product that has numerous defects which affect its quality. It is here that DOE techniques come into play. By running several random experiments, then analyzing the results, the ways to avert the constant problems that lead to poor quality can be identified and a decision made to correct or apply the right settings to production process. As Clements (1991) would have it, the reason why experiments are done is so that a competitive gain can be improved through an increase in the efficiency. A competitive gain cannot be gained without an improvement in the quality of the product. DOEs are conducted as there are decisions to be made, decisions that touch on the production process, decisions that touch on the quality and decisions that touch on the management of the organization or industry. Decisions that touch on the management are very important. They are not done on the basis of speculation, they require factual evidence. As learnt, they need data which provides the factual evidence to make the required decision. Hence, DOE is a mainstay in industries, institutions and organizations. References Clements, R. (1991). The Experimenters Companion. ASQ Press. Anthony, J. (2003). Design of Experiments. Butterworth Heineman (Elsevier). Read More