Peter Goos - Böcker

Quality has become an important source of competitive advantage for the modern company. Therefore, quality control has become one of its key ac­ tivities. Since the control of existing products and processes only allows moderate quality improvements, the optimal design of new products and processes has become extremely important. This is because the flexibility, which characterizes the design stage, allows the quality to be built in prod­ ucts and processes. In this way, substantial quality improvements can be achieved. An indispensable technique in the design stage of a product or a process is the statistically designed experiment for investigating the effect of sev­ eral factors on a quality characteristic. A number of standard experimental designs like, for instance, the factorial designs and the central compos­ ite designs have been proposed. Although these designs possess excellent properties, they can seldom be used in practice. One reason is that using standard designs requires a large number of observations and can therefore be expensive or time-consuming. Moreover, standard experimental designs cannot be used when both quantitative and qualitative factors are to be in­ vestigated or when the factor levels are subject to one or more constraints.

"This is an engaging and informative book on the modern practice of experimental design. The authors' writing style is entertaining, the consulting dialogs are extremely enjoyable, and the technical material is presented brilliantly but not overwhelmingly. The book is a joy to read. Everyone who practices or teaches DOE should read this book." - Douglas C. Montgomery, Regents Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, Arizona State University "It's been said: 'Design for the experiment, don't experiment for the design.' This book ably demonstrates this notion by showing how tailor-made, optimal designs can be effectively employed to meet a client's actual needs. It should be required reading for anyone interested in using the design of experiments in industrial settings."—Christopher J. Nachtsheim, Frank A Donaldson Chair in Operations Management, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota This book demonstrates the utility of the computer-aided optimal design approach using real industrial examples. These examples address questions such as the following: How can I do screening inexpensively if I have dozens of factors to investigate?What can I do if I have day-to-day variability and I can only perform 3 runs a day?How can I do RSM cost effectively if I have categorical factors?How can I design and analyze experiments when there is a factor that can only be changed a few times over the study?How can I include both ingredients in a mixture and processing factors in the same study?How can I design an experiment if there are many factor combinations that are impossible to run?How can I make sure that a time trend due to warming up of equipment does not affect the conclusions from a study?How can I take into account batch information in when designing experiments involving multiple batches?How can I add runs to a botched experiment to resolve ambiguities?While answering these questions the book also shows how to evaluate and compare designs. This allows researchers to make sensible trade-offs between the cost of experimentation and the amount of information they obtain.

Peter Goos, Department of Statistics, University of Leuven, Faculty of Bio-Science Engineering and University of Antwerp, Faculty of Applied Economics, BelgiumDavid Meintrup, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Applied Sciences Ingolstadt, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, GermanyThorough presentation of introductory statistics and probability theory, with numerous examples and applications using JMPJMP: Graphs, Descriptive Statistics and Probability provides an accessible and thorough overview of the most important descriptive statistics for nominal, ordinal and quantitative data with particular attention to graphical representations. The authors distinguish their approach from many modern textbooks on descriptive statistics and probability theory by offering a combination of theoretical and mathematical depth, and clear and detailed explanations of concepts. Throughout the book, the user-friendly, interactive statistical software package JMP is used for calculations, the computation of probabilities and the creation of figures. The examples are explained in detail, and accompanied by step-by-step instructions and screenshots. The reader will therefore develop an understanding of both the statistical theory and its applications.Traditional graphs such as needle charts, histograms and pie charts are included, as well as the more modern mosaic plots, bubble plots and heat maps. The authors discuss probability theory, particularly discrete probability distributions and continuous probability densities, including the binomial and Poisson distributions, and the exponential, normal and lognormal densities. They use numerous examples throughout to illustrate these distributions and densities.Key features: Introduces each concept with practical examples and demonstrations in JMP.Provides the statistical theory including detailed mathematical derivations.Presents illustrative examples in each chapter accompanied by step-by-step instructions and screenshots to help develop the reader’s understanding of both the statistical theory and its applications.A supporting website with data sets and other teaching materials. This book is equally aimed at students in engineering, economics and natural sciences who take classes in statistics as well as at masters/advanced students in applied statistics and probability theory. For teachers of applied statistics, this book provides a rich resource of course material, examples and applications.