Relate the knowledge you have gained of the concept of experimental design to a
ID: 418655 • Letter: R
Question
Relate the knowledge you have gained of the concept of experimental design to a product or service. What factors would you test in running your experiment?Considering the root cause methods that you have studied, which is your preferred method? Why? Relate the knowledge you have gained of the concept of experimental design to a product or service. What factors would you test in running your experiment?
Considering the root cause methods that you have studied, which is your preferred method? Why?
Explanation / Answer
The development of any product or service has several crucial phases. Designing is one of the initial phases which comes under planning a product/ service. Designing, further has several steps contributing to a final prototype. This prototype on testing gets feedbacks and then these are implemented to design leading to a final design freeze. Now, the entire process from initial design to design freeze can be called as experimental design. Now, let’s understand some important steps in experimental design. Firstly, we need to understand the end use/objective of the product or service. Then an initial design is proposed as per the objectives. These objectives are then broken down into measurable KPIs (Key performance indicators). A target is set for these KPIs, keeping in mind several things like industry standards, etc. Now, in testing phase, we would normally use the product or service and understand if our end objective is being fulfilled. Then we look at the scores of KPIs and their deviation from the targets. These are optimized in several iterations of the experiments. In case of missed targets in KPIs, we initiate a root cause analysis. There are several ways for root cause analysis. Few of these are Fishbone diagram, A3 problem solving, 3C (Concern-Cause-Countermeasure) analysis, etc. I would prefer to follow a 3C analysis method as it points out all the concerns and the causes can be listed out for each of them. In addition to the causes, a countermeasure can be proposed immediately with action points and deadlines.