¹University of Warwick, UK

Correspondence: Dr R D Hurrion, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

Received April 1998; Accepted June 1999.

Abstract

This paper compares two forms of experimental design methods that may be used for the development of regression and neural network simulation metamodels. The experimental designs considered are full factorial designs and random designs. The paper shows that, for two example problems, neural network metamodels using a randomised experimental design produce more accurate and efficient metamodels than those produced by similar sized factorial designs with either regression or neural networks. The metamodelling techniques are compared by their ability to predict the results from two manufacturing systems that have different levels of complexity. The results of the comparison suggest that neural network metamodels outperform conventional regression metamodels, especially when data sets based on randomised simulation experimental designs are used to produce the metamodels rather than data sets from similar sized full factorial experimental designs.