The Choice of screening design

Abstract

A screening design is an experimental plan used for identifying the expectedly few active factors from potentially many. In this paper, we compare the performances of 3 experimental plans, a Plackett-Burman design, a minimum run resolution IV design, and a definitive screening design, all with 12 and 13 runs, when they are used for screening and 3 out of 6 factors are active. The functional relationship between the response and the factors was allowed to be of 2 types, a second-order model and a model with all main effects and interactions included. D-efficiencies for the designs ability to estimate parameters in such models were computed, but it turned out that these are not very informative for comparing the screening performances of the 2-level designs to the definitive screening design. The overall screening performance of the 2-level designs was quite good, but there exist situations where the definitive screening design, allowing both screening and estimation of second-order models in the same operation, has a reasonable high probability of being successful.