Experimental design in soap manufacturing for optimization of fuzzified process capability index

• This article ventures to propose a new methodology by integrating Fuzzy Logic with Design of Experiment (DoE) technique.
• The proposed methodology is introduced to incorporate uncertainty in decision making environment in multivariate domain.
• The data has been collected in linguistic (Fuzzified) form to derive its process capability, using justified rules.
• The significance of each factor and optimal value for the process has been determined using DoE.
• Integrated Fuzzy–DoE technique provides better result compared to both Fuzzy and DoE techniques in isolation.

In manufacturing industries, the quality of a product depends on the combined effect of multiple input variables working singly or together and therefore attention has been given on process capability indices to shift from single to multivariate domain. In case of multivariable domain the capability to incorporate uncertainties at the time of decision making becomes necessary. Fuzzy system is introduced to take care of this requirement. In this article the process parameters of soap manufacturing industries have been analyzed. The process capability is determined using Fuzzy Inference System rule editor based on a set of justified if then statements as applicable for the process. The data has been collected in linguistic form to derive its process capability, using a set of justified rules and the effect of each factor has been determined using Design of Experiments (DoE) and analysis of variance technique (ANOVA) for improving the soap quality from perspective of its softness. This article ventures to propose a new methodology by integrating Fuzzy with DoE providing better result followed by DoE and Fuzzy Inference system in isolation.