Teaching Advanced Statistical Techniques to Industrial Engineers and Business Managers

SUMMARY Advanced statistical techniques (AST) such as design of experiments (DoE) and Taguchi methods (TM) are well established methodologies in which only statisticians are formally trained. DoE and TM have been proved to be very effective for improving the process performance, process yield and reducing process variability. However, research has shown that the application of such AST by industrial engineers is limited and often applied incorrectly. The purpose of this paper is to bridge the gap in the statistical knowledge required by the engineers and managers through a simple paper helicopter experiment. This will assist them to apply these techniques without any external expertise for solving quality problems in real-life situations.