Taguchi Software for Experiments

Summary Capabilities

Experiment Designs - You will have option to let Q4W design the experiment or do it yourself. In automatic design, you simply indicate what are your factors and levels, it selects the array and assigns the factors to the appropriate columns. You also have a limited selection of interactions and outer array designs. While automatic design can handle most of your common experiment designs, the manual design option allows you to create the special designs to suit your needs.

Running Experiments - Once you are satisfied with your experiment design, Q4W readily describes the recipes for you to carry out the experiments. It also suggest the random order of conducting each of the experiment which are described in separate pages to resemble an work order.

Analysis of Results - The three basic steps in analysis; Main Effect, ANOVA, and Optimum studies are carried out in sequence with click of OK buttons. Analyses can be performed using Standard or S/N for Smaller, Bigger, Nominal or Dynamic Characteristics.

Miscellaneous Features - Automatic test of presence of interaction, Plot of interaction between two, three and four level factors, Least Squares quadratic curve fitting between average effects for three and four level factors, plot of Main Effects, Bar graph and Pie diagram for ANOVA results, Stacked diagram for factor contributions to Optimum, etc.

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Learn about Qualitek-4 Capabilities (Review pdf - slides)

Getting Started with Qualitek-4

Experiment Planning
You must plan your experiment with utmost care. Follow Recommended Experiment Planning Steps to conduct your planning session. You would benefit by closely following these steps regardless of the size of your team or experiment.

Experiment Designs
Prepare a list of factors and levels for a practice experiment (say 5 factors at 2-level each). Click on the DESIGN menu and select Manual Design. Check L-8 for your design. When in design screen, describe factors and their levels by assigning to any rows (which are columns of the array). Since you will be using five of the seven available columns, click on the UNUSED button to designate the two columns as unused. Click OK to move to the orthogonal array screen. Click OK to experiment file screen. Supply only the first eight characters of your file name. The file extension, .Q4W, is automatically added.

After design is completed, you may review the trial condition by clicking on REVIEW menu and selecting Trial Condition. Should you want to carry out these experiments, you may print some or all the trial conditions.

Result Entry Once the experiments are carried out, you will need to enter the results by clicking on RESULT menu and then, selecting Enter Result option. If your result includes multiple evaluation criteria, you will select Multiple Criteria (OEC) option. Enter results/evaluation criteria as applicable. When done entering results, perform analysis following steps 3 - 8 as described above.

[Note that it is possible to unlock the full capabilities of the DEMO software by reinstalling with your own registration number. To secure your registration/license number for immediate use, write us with your purchase order (email to Support@Nutek-us.com ]

Practice Session

Run Qualitek-4 (QT4) program from your computer and click OK past the Registration Screen to the experiment configuration screen.

Notice that experiment file PISTON.Q4W is already loaded in memory. If not, OPEN file PISTON.Q4W. Since this experiment is already designed and carried out, it has results, and you are in a position to proceed with analysis of results. (In case of a new experiment, like the one you may want to try, you will always start with the design option.)

Proceed to Review and Analyze Results of PISTON and other example experiments. There are over 50 example experiments of all sizes included with the program.

Click Analysis menu and select Standard Analysis. Since PISTON has three samples/results per trial, QT4 will remind you to perform S/N. Click OK to proceed. In the next screen check Bigger is Better Quality Characteristic and click OK.

4. Review results and click on Graph if you wish to view it. Click OK when done.

While in the Main Effect screen, click Plot to view plots of Main Effect. Once you are in the graphics screen, click the "<<" or ">>" button at the bottom of the graph to display other factor plots. Click OK to return to Main Effect screen.

Click on Interaction button, to display interaction plots between any two factors. Select the Automatic option if you want QT4 to calculate interaction between all possible factors, even though you may not have thought about all the interactions or included them in your study. QT4 calculates Nx(N-1)/2 possible pairs of interactions

for N factors and ranks them by Severity of their presence (Severity Index, 0 - 100%). Review the list to note the important pairs of interaction for future reference. Click OK or Cancel to return to Main Effect screen and click OK to proceed to ANOVA screen.

In ANOVA screen, try POOLING the factor with least amount of influence (last column). To POOL, double click on the factor description. At prompt, review % Confidence Level and click OK. Notice how the ANOVA table gets updated. You can also try one or more of the following tasks.

a) Pool another factor with the least influence
b) Reset ANOVA
c) Pool all factors with less than 98.6% confidence level.
d) Plot bar graph, pie chart, and Reset ANOVA
e) Review Pie diagram

Click OK or Optimum button to move to the optimum screen

8. At the Optimum screen:

Read expected response
Convert this result to a real number when S/N analysis is used.
Plot graph of factor contribution
Find response for all factors at level 2
Go back to ANOVA and pool all factors below 10% influence
Determine 90% confidence interval of the optimum response
Go to optimum screen

Click OK to return to the main screen. From the file menu select Open and select any other experiment file from the list of over 100 files. Analyze results by following steps 3 -8.

Make older programs run in Windows 7 (32 or 64 Bits)

Review Additional Qualitek-4 Screens