A pet food company has the business objective of having the weight of a can of cat food come as close to the specified weight as possible. Realizing that the size of the pieces of meat contained in a can and the can fill height could impact the weight of a can, a team studying the weight of canned cat food wondered whether the current larger chunk size produced higher can weight and more variability. The team decided to study the effect on weight of a cutting size that was finer than the current size. In addition, the team slightly lowered the target for the sensing mechanism that determines the fill height in order to determine the effect of the fill height on can weight.
Twenty cans were filled for each of the four combinations of piece size (fine and current) and fill height (low and current). The contents of each can were weighed, and the amount above or below the label weight of 3 ounces was recorded as the variable coded weight. For example, a can containing 2.90 ounces was given a coded weight of -0.10. Results were stored in CatFood2.
Analyze these data and write a report for presentation to the team. Indicate the importance of the piece size and the fill height on the weight of the canned cat food. Be sure to include a recommendation for the level of each factor that will come closest to meeting the target weight and the limitations of this experiment, along with recommendations for future experiments that might be undertaken.