Can we do gage R&R study with less than 5 Parts

[#1]

Hi All 

I am planning to use gage r&r study for my research purpose and try to understand the effect of operator and pipette on final weights.

Here the operators are 3, and parts (in my case pipettes) are also 2 where as trials are 5. Whatever the literature I read suggests the number of parts should be equal to or greater than 5. Can we use do the study in just 2 parts?

[#2]

First, welcome to the community.  

There are several ways to evaluate measurement systems.  Start with what questions do you have about the measurement system?  What are potential sources of variation in the measurement process?  How will you include those sources in your study to estimate their effects?  How likely will your sample of those components in your short-term study be representative of future conditions?  What sources of variation are you wanting to compare the measurement components to?  Evaluating the measurement process is a comparison of the measurement system components to the components you want the measurement system to detect.

Will 2 pipettes be representative of the potential pipette-to-pipette variation in the future?

There are a number resources and reference materials you may find useful....search Wheeler EMP.

https://www.jmp.com/en_us/whitepapers/jmp/emp-management-systems-analysis.html

[#3]

In addition to the thoughts of @statman, from a resource point of view I encourage you to check out this JMP On Demand webinar presented by my former colleague @JerryFish: Evaluating Your Measurement Process