EXPERIMENTAL PLANS TO MEASURE THE INCIDENCE OF TECHNOLOGICAL VARIABLES IN THE INDICATORS OF AN INVESTMENT

Abstract

Introduction:
As uncertainty affects the facilities economic indicators once the investment has been made, it is proposed to quantify it using experimental designs, in those, each technological variable was minimized.
Objective:
To anticipate quickly the uncertainty impacts in technological variables on an industrial facility design in order to define the research strategy to introduce a technology. 
Materials and Methods:
By means of technology knowledge, theoretical tests were carried out to measure the process variables incidence in economic indicators of six technological variants. Due to the high number of independent variables, a combination of partial factorial designs was used to measure the indicators sensitivity to variables deviation.
Results and Discussion:
From the results of cost per liter of ethanol and production weight, the variables coefficients significance for the six variants was determined using the Plackett-Bürman design. Discarding the non-significant variables, and reducing the designs to partial factorials, the variables significance is identified as a measure of uncertainty and which ones should be investigated to solve the problems that limit the introduction of technologies.
Conclusions:
Applying partial factorial designs, the significance of incident variables in the economic indicators for technological variants was defined, with minimal experimental work, allowing the design of research policies in order to minimize expenses associated with technology.