Evolutionary Operation (EVOP) is a manufacturing process-optimization technique developed in the 1950s by
George E. P. Box
George Edward Pelham Box (18 October 1919 – 28 March 2013) was a British statistician, who worked in the areas of quality control, time-series analysis, design of experiments, and Bayesian inference. He has been called "one of the gre ...
.
In EVOP
experimental design
The design of experiments (DOE, DOX, or experimental design) is the design of any task that aims to describe and explain the variation of information under conditions that are hypothesized to reflect the variation. The term is generally associ ...
s and improvements are introduced, while an ongoing full-scale manufacturing process continues to produce satisfactory results. The idea is that process improvement should not interrupt production.
EVOP is a process or technique of systematic experimentation. Evolutionary Operation (EVOP) is based on the understanding that every production lot has the ability to contribute valuable information on the effect of process variables on a particular product characteristic or feature. Typical methods used involve structured designs of experiments (DOE) which may result in interrupting production flow to conduct the trials or experiments. EVOP, on the other hand, is intended to introduce small changes in the process variables during normal production flow. These changes are not large enough to result in non-conforming product, but are significant enough to determine the optimum process ranges.
Application
Applicable virtually to any applied discipline. Optimization is addressed in all spheres of human enterprise from natural sciences and engineering of whatever discipline, through economics, econometrics, statistics and operations research to management science. Practitioners of mathematical programming who require global optimization methods in diverse technological application. EVOP has been implemented in the following quantitative sectors.
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Nuclear reactor technology
A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat from nu ...
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Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, an ...
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Civil engineering
Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...
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Structural engineering
Structural engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering in which structural engineers are trained to design the 'bones and muscles' that create the form and shape of man-made structures. Structural engineers also must understand and cal ...
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Electrical engineering
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Electronic engineering
Electronics engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering which emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current ...
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Chemical engineering
Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...
* High performance control systems
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Fuzzy logic
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Metallurgy
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Space technology
Space technology is technology for use in outer space, in travel (''astronautics'') or other activities beyond Earth's atmosphere, for purposes such as spaceflight, space exploration, and Earth observation. Space technology includes space vehicles ...
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Integrated circuit design
Integrated circuit design, or IC design, is a sub-field of electronics engineering, encompassing the particular logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits, or ICs. ICs consist of miniaturized electronic compon ...
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Transport network
A transport network, or transportation network, is a network or graph in geographic space, describing an infrastructure that permits and constrains movement or flow.
Examples include but are not limited to road networks, railways, air routes ...
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Database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...
* Image processing
* Molecular biology
* Environmental engineering
* Finance and stock
Notes
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External links
full description of the technique
Quality control tools