Minimum Setup Minimum Aberration Two‐level Split‐plot Type Designs for Physical Prototype Testing

Althoughnew technologies allow for less effortinprototyping, physical testing still remainsan importantstep in theproductdevelopment cycle. Well-planned experiments are useful to guide the decision-making process. During the design of anexperiment, one of the challenges is to balance limited resources and system constraints to obtain useful information. It iscommon that prototypes arecomposed of several parts,with some parts moredifficultto assemble thanothers. And, usually,there is only one piece available of each part type and a large number of different setups. Under these conditions, designswith randomization restrictions become attractive approaches. Considering this scenario, a new and additional criterion,minimum setup, to construct split-plot type designs is presented. Designs with the minimum number of setups of the moredifficult parts, which are especially useful for screening purposes in physical prototype testing, are discussed. The use of theproposed criterion combined with minimum aberration for selecting a regular design is shown through a real application intesting car prototypes. As a tool to practitioners, catalogs of selected 32-run minimum setup minimum aberration split-split-plot and split-split-split-plot designs are presented. More complete catalogs are available as Supporting information.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Keywords: fractional factorial design; hard-to-change factor; regular design; restricted randomization; screening design

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