Anyone who has faced a production problem with a need to solve it by using production data can relate to the notion of a brain teaser. The brain teasers presented here are based on real-world situations encountered by workers in manufacturing environments. The brain teasers have three parts: (1) the situation, (2) available data or other supporting information and (3) questions that various workers need answered for continual improvement.
Currently all furniture dries in a separate room. There is a separate temperature control for the room, but the temperature is not constant throughout the room. After consulting one of the engineers at the company, Anita and Jennie decide to add equipment to control air flow and humidity in the drying room. They decided to conduct an experiment on drying time of the finishes using two temperatures, two air flow settings and two densities of furniture in the room while keeping the humidity of the air coming into the room constant. The design is summarized in the table, "Design Factors and Levels for Drying Experiment."