Computer-aided design of experiments: an enabler of agile manufacturing

The ever-rising competition forces the modern organisations to provide variety of products and services that would suit individual customers within a very short period. The organisations which are able to meet this competitive strategy are said to have progressed towards agile manufacturing (AM). Modern researchers are striving to evolve enablers that would help the traditional manufacturing organisations to march towards AM goals. In this direction, this paper points out that the synergic power of two approaches, namely design of experiments (DOE) and computer-aided design (CAD), are inadequately exploited by both researchers and practitioners to achieve AM. In this context, the terminology computer-aided DOE (CADOE) is proposed. An implementation study is presented which revealed that CADOE would facilitate time compression and enhance accuracy, which are the major enablers of achieving AM.