The chocolate biscuit factory you are now in charge of has a problem. There are three 8 hour shifts and 11 shift supervisors who each have their own treasured setup of the machines to give an optimum biscuit pass rate. Every time the controls are adjusted the pass rate drops for several hours until the process settles down again. Each supervisor adjusts the controls to their “optimum” settings when their shift starts! Having analysed what they are doing, you have summarized the settings into 11 controls with two positions each. You need to devise a series of experiments to establish the optimum settings in a convincing manner to improve the productivity of your plant.

What is the minimum number of experiments necessary to find the optimum settings for each control?

Author: Leslie Green