Success Story #7 – Halliburton

“Everyone’s embraced it overall. I think it’s a great tool and extremely powerful.”

Hello readers new and faithful! Welcome and welcome back to Objective Experiments Success Stories, where we share the true achievements, challenges, and advice of Design of Experiments veterans and experts in their respective fields.

This month we spoke with Greg Grosz, Principal Engineer at Halliburton and certified Objective Experiments Problem Solver. Greg has been using DOE for approximately three and a half years. In that time, Greg’s team has heavily used DOE for testing.

“The best aspects [of DOE] are the efficiency of building and augmenting your data and the accuracy and repeatability of the process,” Greg summarized.

While some of our previous interviewees have faced some push-back from coworkers or management about using DOE, Greg denied any such issues in his work.

“Everyone’s embraced it overall. I think it’s a great tool and extremely powerful,” he said.

The difficulties Greg has experienced and overcome are more of the procedural variety than the interpersonal. Specifically, Greg acknowledged that despite the power of software in analyzing experiments, there is no substitute for expertise and knowledge regarding your factors.

“Defining your problem is by far the most valuable first step,” Greg explained. “If you don’t ask the right question, you can have difficulty with extrapolating information.”

Greg also acknowledged that there’s a bright side as well to the challenge of asking the right question:

“It’s a method that inspires a lot of curiosity and creativity.”

On behalf of Objective Experiments and all of our readers, thank you Greg for sharing your wisdom and inspiring us to follow your encouraging example! Keep an eye out for our next success story, or if you have a story of your own share it with us toll-free at 888-764-3958 or in the comment section below.

Here’s to your continued success!

Success Story #6 – Elkhart Plastics

“DOE encourages curiosity and teamwork.”

Hello readers new and faithful! Welcome and welcome back to Objective Experiments Success Stories, where we share the true achievements, challenges, and advice of Design of Experiments veterans and experts in their respective fields.

This month we had the unique opportunity to speak with Noah Wass, Operations Manager at Elkhart Plastics. Noah is a seven-year veteran user of DOE, but also spoke about his experiences managing other DOE users over the past three years.

After learning DOE, Noah put the tools to work at Cascade Dafo, where he was surprised by the accuracy and utility of its results. Compared to one-factor-at-a-time experimentation, Noah was very confident that the extra resources involved in running a designed experiment were put to good use.

At a new company, however, the landscape was different and finding time, resources, and other engineers knowledgeable in DOE to establish a DOE-friendly culture was initially daunting. “If you can get past the startup costs, though, there are no downsides at all,” Noah said.

Because of the difficulty involved, Noah is careful to ensure those reporting to him are using DOE in the most effective way possible.

“It encourages curiosity,” Noah said regarding DOE. “But sometimes people want to use DOE for unnecessary things.” Another danger Noah cited was the possibility of setting up an experiment without asking the right question, thus ending up with potentially unusable results.

To guarantee the best results with DOE, Noah encouraged new users to be cautious and thoroughly understand the variables they’re testing before beginning an experiment. He also stressed the importance of understanding the timeline of one’s project so as to avoid letting important resources go to waste on account of scheduling oversights.

On behalf of Objective Experiments and all of our readers, thank you Noah for sharing your wisdom and inspiring us to follow your courageous example! Keep an eye out October 19th for our next success story, or if you have a story of your own share it with us toll-free at 888-764-3958 or in the comment section below.

Here’s to your continued success!

Success Story #5 – Bio-Pharma

“The bio-pharmaceutical industry has benefited as a whole.

Now I use DOE for almost everything I do in my work.” -Jorge Monteon

Hello readers new and faithful! Welcome and welcome back to Objective Experiments Success Stories, where we share the true achievements, challenges, and advice of Design of Experiments veterans and experts in their respective fields.

This month we spoke with biotech engineer and certified Objective Experiments Problem Solver Jorge Monteon. A user of DOE since 2007 and Objective Experiments student since 2009, Jorge has seen the blossoming acceptance of DOE firsthand.

The value Jorge saw in DOE skyrocketed after he was introduced to JMP software. In the past visual representations of research were limited to three dimensions, and by consequence just three factors. JMP, however, provided the tools to show the effects and interactions of a theoretically endless number of factors.

“How do you visually demonstrate a four or five dimensional model?” Jorge asked. JMP provided the solution.

Although Design of Experiments methodology has been around since 1926, it is still not the standard method of solving problems in most workplaces and universities. Like many of our previous interviewees, Jorge had to overcome some obstacles before his success with DOE could flourish. The first and simpler of these obstacles was simply the theoretical understanding of the method.

“You have to think critically… Junk in, junk out,” Jorge said. He further pointed out that without mathematical understanding of your work you can end up with wholly inaccurate results or misinterpretations of valuable data. “JMP is a big help in that regard.”

The more difficult obstacle was conquering precedent and the ambivalence of those higher in the corporate hierarchy. Tried and true methods are frequently preferred in risk averse environments like biopharma, where mistakes can have very real and deadly consequences. Jorge’s confidence and initiative, however, proved victorious.

“It was a pretty simple experiment, but I showed the visual proof of the results, and saved a lot of time and money,” Jorge said about his first time using DOE professionally. “The bio-pharmaceutical industry has benefited as a whole. Now I use DOE for almost everything I do in my work.”

On behalf of Objective Experiments and all of our readers, thank you Jorge for sharing your wisdom and inspiring us to follow your courageous example! Keep an eye out September 21st for our next success story, or if you have a story of your own share it with us toll-free at 888-764-3958 or in the comment section below.

Here’s to your continued success!