The lubricant additives market is big business, forecast to be worth $16.2 Billion by 2019. So finding the optimum blend of additives to reduce engine wear is very important to companies competing in this crowded marketplace. Here’s how we helped one company to capture over 25% of the global market.
Finding the perfect blend of additives
We were approached by a company who wanted to develop and launch a new product to reduce wear on their customer’s engines. Their current product contained 12 additives, all of which had been added for different reasons. Before developing the new product, they needed to know 2 things:
- Which additives have the most beneficial effect on engine wear?
- What is the optimum concentration of each?
Optimising design of experiments to find the answers
Trials for each additive would be very expensive involving 3 position of engine per run. So our consultants at Statistics for Industry designed a series of experiments which would answer the questions in the most cost-effective way.
We recommended looking at four additives in each experiment which consisted of 3 runs and 9 trials. The additives levels were either absent or present at two different concentrations.
Initially four experiments were designed but one had to be abandoned due one additive being highly detrimental to the engine. This experiment was replaced by a further experiment omitting the detrimental additive.
Our analysis of the data from these initial experiments found that five of the original additives had a significant beneficial effect on engine wear.We then designed two further experiments to look at how the company could minimise costs by optimising concentrations of the 5 beneficial additives.
Reaping the rewards of product success
The company went on to launch their new product, containing the five beneficial additives at our recommended optimum concentration.
The product reduced engine wear by an incredible 60% and captured over 25% of the world market. A huge success for our client and a fantastic return on the money invested in our statistical consultancy service.
If you have an industrial problem that you would like us to help with, please get in touch and ask about our Statistical Consultancy Service. You can find out more about the best way to design experiments by attending our “Design of Experiments” course.
Photo by fotois.com from Kanagawa-ken, Japan (VMAX day 2009) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0], via Wikimedia Commons