Webinar: the importance of design of experiments within chemical engineering

ON 15 September, The Chemical Engineer hosted a webinar to discuss how design of experiments is applied to improve and ensure robust industrial processes.

Engineers working across sectors, from academia to manufacturing, were invited to attend and join us in a conversation about the benefits of design of experiments for organisations and as an essential skillset for your own CPD.

Ahead of the meeting, I spoke with Volker Kraft from JMP’s academic programme and Matt Linsley, Manager of the Industrial Statistics Research Unit (ISRU) at Newcastle University, who will co-present the webinar and demonstrate JMP’s design of experiments software.

We started off by discussing what engineers will learn by attending the webinar.

Linsley said attendees will gain insights into a way of doing experimentation that can reinvigorate the approach to research and development in academia and industry.

“If you want to do things faster, much more efficiently, but achieve higher quality solutions then I think design of experiments is the way forward,” he said.

“Most people, whether in industry or academia, they are working in multidimensional systems – complex systems – where process variables and process factors interact in a complex way. These processes have to be optimised, they have to remain robust. DoE is a really powerful methodology for optimising processes and improving research and development practices.

Kraft said as well as learning about the software, he also wants to let attendees know about the learning resources that are available – many of them for free.

“You don’t have to be the most theoretical statistician in the world to use design of experiments effectively,” Linsley said. “The software is really user-friendly. It’s really effective and with just a minimal knowledge of statistics you can use the software in conjunction with statistics to significantly improve your business and industry – or in academia.”

Kraft added: “The key term is probably real-world problem-solving. If you ask in industry what skills are needed to solve the typical real-world problems, design of experiments is one of the typical answers,” Kraft said.

This event has now taken place. To watch a recording visit: https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/cpd/webinars/the-importance-of-design-of-experiments-within-chemical-engineering-newcastle-university-and-jmp/