Sorry, I'm a bit confused by some of your terminology and your situation. Are you doing explanatory investigation or predictive modeling?What do you mean "I am building a DOE model"? Do you mean you are building a model using data from an experiment? Because, if you are running an experiment, you should have a hypothesized model already in mind. This is how you determine what experiments need to be run. R^2 is only one of the many statistics used to help refine the model. The more important statistic is the delta between the R^2 and R^2 Adjusted. This will provide insight to over-specifying the model (e.g., including insignificant terms in the model.).
Do you have measurement system issues or does your experimental unit change over time. It goes back to my first question. If you are developing an explanatory model, then having the random effect in the model may be useful. It is much less useful for predictive models.
"All models are wrong, some are useful" G.E.P. Box