Ruggedness Evaluation of Test Procedures

W. J. Youden was the first to suggest that a test method be evaluated for ruggedness in a single laboratory before we subject it to an interlaboratory performance study. This review explains the logic behind this simple and efficient experimental design and includes a completely worked out example, from one of Youden's papers, for the commonly used scheme of 7 factors in 8 experiments. Experimental plans for studying the effects of 11 factors in 12 experiments and 15 factors in 16 experiments are layed out along with many references.