Why is not design of experiments widely used by engineers in Europe?

An extensive literature review was carried out to detect why design of experiments (DoE) is not widely used among engineers in Europe. Once 16 main barriers were identified, a survey was carried out to obtain first-hand information about the significance of each. We obtained 101 responses from academics, consultants and practitioners interested in DoE. A statistical analysis of the survey is introduced, including: (a) a ranking of the barriers, (b) grouping of barriers using factorial analysis, (c) differences between characteristics of respondents. This exploratory analysis showed that the main barriers that hinder the widespread use of DoE are low managerial commitment and engineers’ general weakness in statistics. Once the barriers were classified, the most important resultant group was that related to business barriers.

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