Author name: Forrest Breyfogle

Teaching Design of Experiments to students is not an easy task. It is difficult to simulate the entire effort within the constraints of a classroom. You can teach the analysis with software, but this is not enough to really gain an understanding of DOE. In an effort to teach these concepts to a non-manufacturing audience, the DOE concepts were used to improve the baking of a chocolate chip cookie. You may say that is a manufacturing process and it is, but it involves all of the DOE concepts in an arena that most can understand. In this webinar we will walk through the entire process of planning, designing, running, and analyzing a factorial DOE. If you consider DOE a difficult concept and have a fear running one, this webinar is for you. By the end of the webinar, you will understand all the fractional factorial DOE concepts as well as know a few things about making chocolate chip cookies. We will even share the results of the DOE with you! Objectives: Walk through the key activities of a Design of Experiments (planning, designing, running, and analyzing ) in an area that you understand. At the end of the webinar you should feel much more comfortable in using a DOE, even outside of manufacturing.

Business survival depends upon fulfilling the wants, needs, and desires of customers. For long-lasting success fulfilling this business requirement, an effective system is needed to capture and utilize Voice of the Customer (VOC) inputs. However, organizations often undertake this VOC task by creating a function that focuses on conducting and interpreting customer satisfaction surveys. With this approach, policies might even be established where employee compensation depends upon how well satisfaction-survey goals are met. Care needs to be exercised when capturing and using customer inputs, since the best intention can lead to playing games with the numbers and/or a VOC silo effort that is not integrated in the overall business management system. From an effectiveness point of view, one might even question whether customer satisfaction is the most important measurement to track. Why? Often customer satisfaction does not correlate as well as we might think to future customer’s buying behaviors – a critical factor. This presentation will describe an integrated business management system that effectively blends VOC needs, wants, and desires with metrics that move organizations toward achievement of the 3 Rs of business; i.e., everyone doing the Right things, and doing them Right, at the Right time.