In preliminary research phases, the number of potentially influential factors to investigate is usually quite large. It is not uncommon to have to deal with at least 10 factors limiting the use of classic factorial designs.
Screening designs are experimental designs used to identify the most influential factors that influence a response or outcome in a process or system with a reasonable number of runs. These designs are typically used in the early stages of experimentation, when you want to quickly assess a large number of variables to determine which ones have the greatest effect on the response variable. The goal is to eliminate unimportant factors and focus resources on the most significant ones.
This course covers the construction of such designs, the price to pay to limit the number of factor level combinations to test and the statistical analysis of such data. The use of statistical models is paramount in this course.
The construction of screening designs and their statistical analysis is covered with the help of real case studies.
Course Outline
Session 1: Pros & Cons of Factorial Designs – The Idea Behind Factorial Fractional Designs
- Estimable effects vs. experimentation cost
- How to reduce the number of runs?
- Notion of mathematical model
- Cost: Confounding & aliasing
- Notions of repetition & balance
Session 2: Screening Designs
- Basic designs
- Construction of 2k-p designs
- Selection criterion: design resolution
- Statistical analysis
- Plackett-Burman designs
- Use of Blocks in screening designs
Course Duration
The recommended course duration is 2 online sessions.
Target Audience
This course is particularly intended for people conducting preliminary experiments to determine the impact of a large number of factors for an observed phenomenon and to select those that are of most interest. It is also intended for people wishing to reduce the number of factors to be studied during an experiment.
Participants should be familiar with the construction of factorial designs and analysis of variance (ANOVA). They must have completed the training courses listed below or have an equivalent level: