Note: STRATEGY for Windows 8.0 requires either Windows 9x or Windows NT 4.0.
STRATEGY for Windows is designed with one purpose in mind: finding the best answer to industrial questions in the quickest possible time at the lowest possible cost. It is a full 32-bit upgrade of the ground-breaking software created by Dave Doehlert.
STRATEGY for Windows presents a full library of classic designs but its real strength is its ability to find the sweet spot in any well-designed experiment from any source including Gosset, the state of the art design engine from Ron Hardin and Neil Sloane at Bell Labs. STRATEGY's GridSearch option allows you to mathematically search all of the possible outcomes rather than leaving you to find the answer by visual inspection or relying on antiquated "mountain-climbing" techniques. ANY number of factors and responses can be simultaneously analyzed, and a wide variety of constraints can be imposed on the search.
Simply put, you can find good answers using STRATEGY that you will miss if you use other software. The more complex your experiment, the more that you need STRATEGY for Windows. Here's just one example:
In the fall of 1996, Steve Lapin of DSM Desotech had just finished a complex and expensive experiment which he had analyzed using software from one of our leading competitors. The answer that they were seeking was critical, but they had been unable to find any sweet spots that met all of their goals. They were about to discard the results when Steve decided to give Dave Doehlert a call.
Dave suggested that Steve send us the data so that we could run it through our new GridSearch engine which was in alpha test at the time. We found 46,000 sweet spots in our initial run. His experiment did provide the predictions that he was looking for, but his software could not find the answer.
If Steve had found one sweet spot using the competior's software, that discovery would have saved the experiment and solved the problem put to Steve by his management. However, he still might have missed the best answer. The long list of sweet spots discovered by STRATEGY meant that Steve could refine his goals and come up with an even better answer.
If you're still trying to find your sweet spots by coloring and stacking endless piles of contour plots, it's time for STRATEGY. But most of all, if you are throwing away experiments because they cannot find an answer when you have every reason to believe that an answer is possible, you need to take a long, hard look at STRATEGY for Windows.
If you are familiar with STRATEGY for DOS, it may already be doing everything that you need. Why should you want to change?
STRATEGY for Windows now makes it easy to analyze experiments of any size involving discrete factors, mixture components, and process factors that are the reality of modern experimentation testing.
Most of the limitations of STRATEGY for DOS were linked to the limitations of DOS. STRATEGY for Windows removes almost every limitation present in the old program. There is no limit to the number of factors or responses that you can analyze, and any number of responses can be analyzed simultaneously.
Although STRATEGY for Windows does more than its predecessor, it is easier to use. There are three primary reasons for this: adoption of the standard Windows interface, taking a single approach to mixtures and process, and an improved help system.
STRATEGY for Windows uses the standard commands and utilities of the Windows 95 interface. This means that the skills that you gain in using other tools are exactly the skills you need to run STRATEGY for Windows.
Dave Doehlert has modified the design of the program so that mixture and process factors are treated with the same approach. As a result, there are fewer screens to negotiate and get familiar with.
Finally, a lot of work has gone into the new help file. It is also one of the parts of program that will see dramatic improvement in the weeks and months to come.
STRATEGY for Windows uses the GridSearch method to find sets of responses that meet your specified targets, and it makes more sense than ever before. Years ago, Dave Doehlert decided against using the much faster "mountain-climbing" algorithms because they could easily miss valuable sweet spots. Today, computers are thousands of times faster so the time required for GridSearch has shrunk dramatically..
GridSearch now automatically stays within your design constraints, and you can further constrain the search in a number of ways. You can even constrain GridSearches by time so that you can get a feel for the practicality of your goals before you commit to a long GridSearch.
The new GridSearch can analyze experiments that include multiple mixtures as well as multiple sets of discrete factors. It is particularly tuned to the task of analyzing I-Optimal designs as generated by Gosset.
STRATEGY for Windows allows you to print to any printer connected to your network. No special setup is required for any printer because all of that is handled by the operating system. Contour plots can be printed one, two, three, or four charts to a page.
We had made several improvements to our graphics program when we discovered a charting utility called Olectra Chart. This impressive utility allows you to rotate, spin, scale, move, and zoom any contour plot. You can right-click on any area of any chart and see the response values.
The bottom line is that the new STRATEGY for Windows now gives you a tool fine-tuned for demonstrating that you have found the best answer. It is both powerful and easy to work with.
So what do you care about the architecture of the software? If you are like most of our customers, your main complaint about STRATEGY for DOS was related to how long it took to get upgrades.
We were determined to bring you a version of STRATEGY that could be improved every day. Not only are there literally hundreds of suggestions from our loyal customers, Dave Doehlert has enough new ideas to keep all of us busy for the rest of our lives.
That means that there will be new versions of STRATEGY for Windows out every few weeks not every few years. With the new architecture, testing changes is the largest part of the work involved in making the change, and even the testing is significantly reduced because each change affects a smaller portion of the program.
STRATEGY for Windows provides more control over your regression, GridSearch, and contour plots output. The regression output now includes an optional series of cues that guide the user through the results.