Application of quality concepts and experimental design to processing of negative plates for valve-regulated sealed lead acid batteries

The authors discuss the design and application of a multifactor experiment using orthogonal arrays to assess the cause of off-target and highly variable levels of free lead in initially full charged negative plates which have been dried in an inert atmosphere. The robust multifactor experiment was used to isolate the source of the problem in the drying process. The same technique can be used to design robust manufacturing processes whose outputs are both on target and resistant to input variability