The purpose of this study was to determine the significance of the variations of the pilot machine of the Department of Paper Science and Engineering at Western Michigan University by variance analysis conducted on basis weight profiles obtained from the Industrial Nucleonics scanning basis weight gauge. The profiles obtained from the basis weight gauge were subjected to a computer program which computed the cross-direction, machine-direction, and random component variations and determined F-ratios. The F-ratio shows the significance of the component variation. Cross-direction variation was found to decrease with speed. Machine-direction variation showed no significant trend and the random variation decreased with speed. It was found that the F-ratio comparing the machine-direction component to the random component was significant at the one per cent confidence level and should be lessened if better operational efficiency for the pilot machine is desired
