The principal investigator is responsible for this course and has three interactive computer teaching modules in preliminary stages of development for use in the course, once the teaching laboratory is equipped. One module concerns capability analysis for multi-dimensional characteristics. A series developed by the principal investigator is programmed to handle the two-dimensional case. Some companies use software for two-dimensional capability analyses that depends upon less efficient numerical integration or Monte Carlo methods for computations. The second illustrates the fundamentals of elementary control charting.
Students choose from several production processes, make runs, and perform capability analyses.
Some processes are in control, others have trends in mean, others have trends in variance, and others are chaotic. The purpose is to find levels of the predictor variables for a production run with a specified target for the output. Before having had lectures and readings on the design of experiments, students are given the opportunity to explore the response surface with up to 16 observations. A production run of 100 parts is scored on the basis of CP index, CPK index, percentage of parts out of tolerance, and Taguchi loss. After lectures on the design of experiments, students interact with the processes more intelligently and see the immediate impact of their education on the choices of factor levels for their runs.