Stat-Ease, Inc.offers Design of Experiments (DOE) software, books, training, and consulting services. 

Bringing design of experiments (DOE) to England might be likened to delivering coals to Newcastle, but that's what three U of M IT alumni accomplished via their company, Stat-Ease, Inc. Last September, they displayed their new version of statistical software, called Design-Expert?, at the international Industrial Statistics in Action Conference at Newcastle University.

After the war, a statistician at Imperial Chemical, George Box, described how to generate response surfaces for process optimization. From this point forward, DOE took hold in the chemical process industry, where factors such as time, temperature, pressure, concentration, flow rate and agitation are easily manipulated. Later, Box co-authored a textbook6 that formed the basis for the original version of DOE software by Stat-Ease, called Design-Ease.

In 1988, the company released its first version of Design-Expert, which provided the tools for response surface methods (RSM) for process optimization. This package complemented Design-Ease. Design-Expert also provided innovative statistical tools for optimizing mixtures-a big attraction for users in the chemical process industries. With this product line extension, sales grew at a healthy rate and Stat-Ease added many new employees to handle orders, provide statistical help and program new features.

A major milestone occurred in 1996: Stat-Ease incorporated all of the features of Design-Ease into Design-Expert version 5 and translated it all to the graphical user interface of Windows. By then its user base approached six figures, so the demand for upgrades stimulated sales and allowed further hiring of programmers and other personnel.

The Stat-Ease mission is "Statistics Made Easy." This would be mission impossible without proper education. Unfortunately, most scientists and engineers get very little statistical training in college. Stat-Ease fills the gap with a variety of computer-intensive short courses from "Experiment Design Made Easy," the most popular workshop, up to advanced sessions on optimization and beyond. Aided by a stable of in-house and contract consultants, Pat and Mark teach hundreds of technical professionals the tools of DOE at dozens of workshops worldwide. For those who need help getting off the ground, they recently authored a non-academic book that makes DOE as easy as possible for non-statisticians.

Contact

Stat-Ease, Inc.
2021 East Hennepin Avenue, Suite 480
Minneapolis, MN 55413-2726
Phone: 612.378.9449, Fax: 612.378.2152